PDF here.

As NRO notes:

Texas Republican Rep. Kevin Brady says in a release that committee analysts actually couldn’t fit everything in: “This portrays only about one-third of the complexity of the final bill. It’s actually worse than this.”

I have some quibbles about the graphic itself — primarily, I wish it were interactive, so you could choose which aspects of the tangle to concentrate on — but the reality they represent is horrific.

Things to looks at:

Red circles with dark orange interiors are “Rationing Potentials”.

Orange circles with light blue interiors are “Involvements with the health insurance market”.

Note that the Patient, lower right hand corner, is not directly connected to the Physician, lower left hand corner. I suspect, I hope, I pray, that this is a fault in the chart, not a true representation. If it is true, this means that I, cash in hand, cannot go to my doctor, pay him, and be examined and treated without getting some kind of government approval. [update]OK, close examination of the chart shows that the lines are actually labeled with the section number of the Obamacare act establishing that connection. Unless Obamacare breaks the existing patient-doctor connection, no wonder it does not appear on the chart.

One more charting quibble: I’d like to be able to click on one entity and see all the other entities it connects to, and how.

My title asks if you trust the Post Office. This chart shows that you have to trust several non-health-care related agencies, including the IRS, which has a history of being openly hostile to citizens. Other agencies include Justice, Homeland Security, Labor, and Treasury.

there is very little feedback from the free market to the State. The State conjures deficit money from thin air, and believes itself capable of sustaining unlimited losses in the service of a “just cause.” Ideology is pursued in defiance of cost and benefit analysis. Politicians rarely suffer personal consequences for disastrous economic decisions. In fact, they have a good chance of manipulating such disasters into golden opportunities to acquire more power for themselves.

The State is exceptionally poor at analyzing the true value of anything. The lens of ideology is filled with clouds of hatred, occasionally sundered by blinding flashes of righteousness. The actual value of health care and medical insurance was almost completely invisible to the architects of ObamaCare.
…
The great lesson of socialism will be repeated one more time, as it has played out around the world, without exception: governments redistribute poverty, not wealth. Some people will find ways to make money in the dreary twilight of an economy where the light of knowledge through value has been blotted out. You probably won’t be one of them.

And this:

The masterminds behind ObamaCare will quietly relish the collapse of the private health insurance industry, which was one of their primary objectives all along.

It’s crucial to understand that this is their objective because they believe the marketplace is inherently evil. They think they’re doing the right thing, that they are making the world a better place.

They believe that wealth is money, gold, wampum. Beads and trinkets.

Doc has it right: what has real value is information. “Information wants to be free,” yes, but socialists believe that the government can own all the information, and hand it out in equal little chunks out to everybody. They don’t understand that different people in different situations place different value on a given piece of information.

This was put together by Democrats; it’s not a Republican or Tea Party hit job.

It makes me wonder three things:

First, what’s going to happen this November? I may sign up as a poll watcher.

Second, what did they threaten Hillary with to get her to accept the Secretary of State position?

Third, where was the press during all this? Heh, heh, just joking, of course; we all know where the press was: on its knees before its Lord’s zipper.

Anyway, posting first of five parts; follow links at youtube for the rest.

Via Carol’s Closet.

But I posted nothing. Why the hell not?

Because it’s weak and wishy-washy. Because it says, in effect, no, you can’t ban guns, but you can regulate them to death. Because it’s another crack in the wall, and not a general tearing down.

Mostly, though, because it doesn’t apply to me, or you, or any citizen.

The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, down to the Second Amendment, have nothing to do with what We the People are allowed to do. The Constitution is directed at the government, the State, giving it structure, defining its (few and strictly limited) powers, and listing things it is forbidden to do.

We, the People, can own private property, including tools, including printing presses and telephones and guns. Period. We can defend ourselves against crime and tyranny.

We can do those things whether the State, or the states, or petty little town hall dictators like Daley, say nay or yay.

That’s what a right is: a declaration that you can act according to the dictates of your own conscience, subject to the imposed will of no one, no legislator, no executive, no judge, no uniform or badge.

So, yeah, I’m interested in McDonald in the sense that it’s good to see that the Supreme Court is slowly rousing from its long slumber, that it realized that if it tried to take that right away, it would have a real, honest-to-blood-in-the-streets fight on its front steps. It’s interesting to see the twisted logic four out of nine Justices used to try to deny a plainly written limit on their power. Scorpions and wasps are interesting, even beautiful, in their way, too.

But McDonald does not give you the right to own or carry a gun. It will only, over the long run, perhaps make it a little less legally risky to do so. It is a harbinger of change. It acknowledges that The State has pretty well gone about as far as we’ll let it, which is a good sign.

And it chips away at the cover that gun-grabbers have been hiding behind for decades, although again, it’s only a chip, not even a whole brick, much less the tumbling of the prison walls.

Daley’s scared. But not scared enough.

Personally, I won’t think he’s scared enough until he leaves town under cover of darkness, stinking with panic and warm piss running down his leg.

And frankly, not even then, not until he hits the road block, and armed citizens drag him out of his car and march him over to the nearest wall.

[update]

John Venlet “takes no pleasure” in McDonald, either:

…because the Second Amendment has been so obfuscated by the poetic license musings of the ruling class over the years that individuals no longer trust their own knowledge and understanding of the words within the Second Amendment, as presented to them by the founding fathers.

The Second Amendment, runs a total of twenty-seven (27) words, which are as follows.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

These twenty-seven (27) words have been mashed, bashed, pureed, and mouthed with a baby’s zeal for a zwieback, resembling not so much a learned discourse of knowledge and wisdom, but a bunch of college freshman in an American Lit 101 class analyzing a Shel Silverstein poem, and not understanding it.

I suppose, if an individual is content to waive their inalienable rights, kneeling as a supplicant before the power of the State, pleading for the right of property ownership, the SCOTUS decision will appear as a victory over the State, but it would be an unprincipled victory, as illustrated in these words from Billy Beck:

I have more principled reasons for my stand on owning firearms, and I don’t care one whit in the world for the Second Amendment. It means nothing to me. My rights have nothing to do with the U.S. Constitution, and when it dawns on people that it has finally been erased—the principal danger of all political premises posed as “social contracts”—my rights will still validly exist, even if I die defending them. I own firearms because I have a right to private property. That is the First Thing.

…Keep….Bear…infringed…
These three (3) small words were not misunderstood by individuals when The Constitution of the United States was written. “To keep” meant exactly what is implied, “to retain in one’s possession,” ownership; “to bear” meant exactly what is implied, “to carry or possess;” and “shall not be infringed” meant exactly what is implied, the State shall not violate the right to own or carry arms, yet today these three (3) small words are so misunderstood that Justice Thomas Clarence required fifty-six (56) pages worth of words to support SCOTUS’ decision that individuals do have a right to keep and bear arms in the City of Chicago.

Individuals can slice and dice the Second Amendment all they want, but the fact remains that any law restricting ownership or the carrying of firearms is unconstitutional. Period.

And let me riff for a moment on Beck’s “right to private property”. That right is also not granted by the Constitution, which says,

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable search and seizure, shall not be violated….

Again, that does not does not grant us the right to private property, or our right to defend our privacy. I don’t care what the courts say, I have that right, and the Constitution prohibits the State from violating it.

What’s more, there’s no “Congress shall make no law” limitation. No one can violate my security, no one, and I take that to mean thugs crackheaded as well as jackbooted.

And if I’m going to defend my person, house, papers and effects from whomever, I must have the tools necessary for that defense. And I may use those tools to defend myself and secure my privacy against both crackheads and jackboots.

Infringing the Second Amendment, then, violates the Fourth as well.

That the State has so egregiously infringed and violated both rights doesn’t mean that I do not have those rights; it means that the offending State is illegitimate by its own founding charter, and may no longer command my respect, or even my obedience, except by raw force.

I’ll say it one more time: I follow these cases to take the measure of those who would rule me, not determine the limits of my own actions or conscience.

At least his body did, although I personally have not seen the body or run the DNA tests, so I can’t be sure. The heavy spirit of his legislation will torment Americans of all races and classes for a long time to come.

But at the very least, he and Ted Kennedy, himself eternally drowning in a car submerged in icy water, will have each other in sight, each longing for the torment of the other.

I wish. Actually, of course, he’s simply gone, secure in the knowledgelie that his subjects in West Virginia and his minions in the press would mourn the passing of a decent, honorable statesman. Neither he nor Kennedy will be called to account for their evil, because they’re both dead, and beyond the reach of any judgment other than history’s.

Billy Beck:

Robert Racist-Ass Tax-Eater Corruption-Thy-Name-Is Byrd

That rotten old sonofabitch is dead, and a plague is lifted from upon the people. This is a good day. Not a great one, because the Endarkenment is still rolling along, but a good one. Robert Byrd is fucking dead. Hallelujah.

Instapunk:

Think They’ll Bury Him in His Sheet?

Preperations are underway in the few nooks of rationality and justice remaining (if any) in our legal system to sue the Byrd estate to recover a portion of half a century’s pork.

I never understood that “the good oft interred with their bones” line. Maybe 2000 years ago that’s how it was. Nowadays it seems like everyone’s infected with this “don’t speak ill of the dead” virus that makes us lie whenever some nob kicks off.

I don’t go for that. When someone who should be dead dies, I rejoice. At the top of my lungs.

Nick Gillespie:

Let’s Not Forget Sen. Byrd’s Negative Legacy. “As the encomia mount like rotting, fly-buzzed piles of the pork-barrel spending he so systematically shoveled back to his West Virginia home, let’s not forget the late Sen. Robert Byrd’s most undeniable legacy: Undermining belief in politicians as little more than self-serving glad-handers on the hunt for more and more taxpayer money for their constituents.”
..
it’s Byrd’s status as the Babe Ruth of pork-barrel spending and taxpayer-funded narcissism that is his real legacy and the one we should never forget or forgive. Here lies a man who pushed his home state to build a statue of him in defiance of a rule that such honorees be dead for 50 years.

Comment: Why am I making the “cheap shot” of bringing up his Klan history? Because he didn’t resign in shame, and because his constituents didn’t fire him for being incompetent and evil. Despite this blatant evidence of his unfitness for office, followed by decades of rotting pork and putrid self-aggrandizement, he continued to cling to his office, and his constituents continued to re-elect him.

No forgetting and forgiving under those circumstances.

Radley Balko:

So if I’m correctly reading the various tributes to Sen. Robert Byrd floating around the web this morning, I’m supposed to celebrate how the man atoned for his bigotry earlier in life by devoting the rest of his life to public service . . . where he used other people’s money to build monuments to himself.

That this could be considered a form of redemption says all you need to know about what the political class considers important.

Here’s a bill of particulars with references to the Constitution.

Mexican gangs with lookout posts IN ARIZONA??? Mexican snipers?? What in Hell is the matter with you? Are you so intent on “fundamentally transforming” this country that you will allow this? An ARMED incursion across our southern border and death threats to law enforcement and YOU ALLOW THIS???

If so, then you are a traitor in the purest sense of the word and should be treated as such. You are in direct violation of the Constitution by denying the citizens of Arizona the right to “be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects” as outlined in the Fourth Amendment, in addition to your failure to respect Article IV Sec.4 of the Constitution regarding the “guarantee to EVERY (individual) state a republican form of government and shall protect each of them (including Arizona) against INVASION”.

AND your failure “To provide for the calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and REPEL INVASIONS” (Article 1 Sec. 8 of the Constitution)

You are also in violation of Article III Sec. 3 of the Constitution in that, by allowing these outposts to exist you are indirectly giving “Aid and Comfort” to an invading force, the enemy. You have, at the very least, allowed a potential state of war to exist on our own sovereign soil and have done nothing to defend or support those in the line of fire. Abandonment and persecution of the people you were sworn to protect makes “Traitor” seems appropriate.

I must add, you are not only a traitor but a seditionist as well. That you are IN FACT, guilty of “overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority as tending toward insurrection against the established order” We The People being the legal authority and states rights being the “established order”.

“Subversion of a constitution” and “incitement of discontent (or resistance) to lawful authority” which you have done by demonizing the people of and filing suit against, the state of Arizona. You have, in fact, created a “commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws” (of the state of Arizona) all of which are part of the very definition of sedition. You have, in essence, declared war on one of our own states by these actions and you WILL be held accountable.

Read it all, every word.

And you leg-tingling “Journo-lists” who acted as this thug’s mouthpiece during and after the election?

Right up against the wall with him. You’re not the independent, free press protected by the Constitution; you’re his shills, and if he starts bailing out your worthless puppy trainers, you’ll be his paid shills, his co-conspirators.

Anybody out there willing to admit they voted for him? Still proud of it? Here’s your rough-hewn rail, have a nice ride out of town.

Feeling a bit duped?

Too. Fucking. Bad. You deserve everything that’s about to come down around your poor little ignorant innocent socialist peacenik ears. We’ll do our best to keep it from killing you, but remember: we don’t feel sorry for you, we blame you. We’ll let you in if you promise to work, but expect a lot of rough words and angry glares while you dig the latrines.

Via Sondra K. Again.

I have two problems with the graphic:

First, the scale for expenditure per child is absolute, in constant dollars. It shows an almost four-fold increase. However, it commits a cardinal sin: it doesn’t start at zero. This makes the increase look worse than it is.

Second, the scale for “achievement” is not absolute, it’s relative, a percentage of the starting point. It has no units; we don’t know what’s actually being measured here, and it’s hard to understand where we could expect the achievement to be, given the increase in expenditure.

I think the easiest way to present that would be to make the expenditure scale a percentage as well.

If we do that, a four-fold increase would display as a four hundred percent improvement.

The original graph scales achievement from -10% to +100%. A 100% improvement would represent a doubling in achievement. We had a four-fold increase in expenditure; we’d like to see a four-fold increase in achievement.

The actual achievement increase wanders around less than 10%, except for science, which falls off to about MINUS 5% and then stays constant.

If we rescaled the graph so that both sides went to 400%, the achievement lines would be essentially flat; the variation would be not much more than the line thickness.

As bad as this graph is; the achievement scale has actually been magnified so you can see the variation. The actual situation is even worse.

Since we don’t know what’s actually being measured by the “achievement” scale, let me take a wild-ass guess that the original metric has itself shifted over the years. Educators are grading themselves on the curve, and that curve has been adjusted so that student achievement can at least be shown to remain constant.

The expenditure scale is in “constant 2009 dollars”.

I bet that if “achievement” were being measured in, say, “constant 2009 grade point averages”, the achievement graphs would be decline almost as precipitately as the expenditures have risen.

As I have repeatedly stated, Barack Obama is a threat to the continued existence of the United States, and he must be impeached, or resign. The real question is, what will we replace his bad policies with? Real patriots understand the need to think ahead, to create a meaningful purpose and direction as we rebuild our nation. We know that the next several generations need a better world to live in, which can only be a Post-Obama World.

Oh, wait, except for one thing:

The speaker is Kesha Rogers, a black female Democrat running for Congress.

As Ace of Spades points out, she has her own issues (“Devout LaRouchite”, according to Ace) but she definitely points to Obama’s own party, and his natural demographic, turning against him.

Mom looked at me with something like skeptical pity.

“Now, Dave, not even I believe that.”

Believe it, Mom. Please note that this is from “whitehouse.gov”; that makes it officially-for-real official, really.

d) consider and propose evidence-based models, policies, and innovative approaches for the promotion of transformative models of prevention, integrative health, and public health on individual and community levels across the United States;

and

address lifestyle behavior modification (including smoking cessation, proper nutrition, appropriate exercise, mental health, behavioral health, substance-use disorder, and domestic violence screenings) and the prevention measures for the five leading disease killers in the United States;

He is doing this to begin filling in the woefully thin regulatory skeleton strung together as the more than two thousand unread pages of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Dear The One: Do you have any idea how close you are to triggering a transformative behavior modification program for you and your buddies on the National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council (NPHPPHC)? It’s item number two in an obscure little document I doubt was covered in any of your conlaw classes at Yale. Its initials are “RKBA”.

Did you know, Mr. President The One Sir, that my speel cheker doesn’t even recognize “transformative” as a word?

And seriously? The pee-pee-pee council? Seriously?

Having watched the oil gushing in the Gulf of Mexico, dairy farmer Frank Konkel has a hard time seeing how spilled milk can be labeled the same kind of environmental hazard.

Stupid ignorant farmer hicks. Just because one of these is a delicious, nutritious beverage produced by other mammals and is consumed daily by millions of humans, including children and even babies; and one of them a heavy, toxic mineral brew of volatile fuels, solvents, and tars that would kill you if you ate it over cereal or even drank it with pancakes — pancakes, mind! — doesn’t mean they’re not the same thing, obviously. Thank heaven we have expert government bureaucrats to remind us of these simple scientific facts.

Thank heaven they’re now going to be advising us directly on what we should eat and what kind of exercise we should. And remember, boys and girls, if you don’t take their advice, they’ll just have to make you.

And about that “recently re-empowered EPA”. When are you folks going to get around to re-empowering we the people again?

Remember, boys and girls, he’s a Congressman, so he has a right to know who you are, and you have no business asking him questions.

You do, however, have a right to know your place, peasant.

I have seen the video posted on several blogs. I deeply and profoundly regret my reaction and I apologize to all involved. Throughout my many years of service to the people of North Carolina, I have always tried to treat people from all viewpoints with respect. No matter how intrusive and partisan our politics can become, this does not justify a poor response. I have and I will always work to promote a civil public discourse.

Asking him if he fully supports Obama’s agenda is intrusive? Ether, we have a Second Amendment. You obviously have no idea what intrusive is.

I have always believed that public office is a public trust.

It is, Etherbreather. It surely is.

And you just burned it. Along with any expectation you might have of courteous, civil discourse.

Incidentally, that little business about free speech? It comes with freedom of the press as well. That means, Etherbreather, that we the people have the right to ask you questions. It’s not just for licensed, professional journalists at well-regulated press conferences.

It also comes with the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

We gots us a grievance. You’re it.

Here’s more of the Congresscrapper’s civil discourse.