Democrats and Gun Control

When, several years ago, I pointed out the then current FBI homicide by weapon type data and included a link to the FBI website so doubters could check for themselves, I was told I’d “probably vote for Hitler” and that I was just fantasizing about shooting people.

These people are not open to reasoned debate. I think they are fervently pro-state violence so long as they control the state, and they intend to do exactly that with no qualms about methods.

Hence gun bans and speech bans, including, in NY city, quarter million dollar fines for Bad Speak.

These are not people of good will with whom we disagree. They are extremely dangerous, physically dangerous, thugs on the verge of complete control of the federal government and many state governments.

The Emerging Budget Deal

For nearly forty years the Responsible Faction has told us that balancing the budget ‘this year’ would bring about the collapse of civilization. ‘But soon, yes, in a few years, we will balance it. But not now: Banks would be embarrassed, the economy would collapse. Millions would die.’

If we had ignored the Responsible Faction 35 years ago, balanced the budget, suffered the short term problems, and continued to ignore the Responsible Faction, we’d be in far better shape today.

Instead, we submitted to the Responsible Faction’s wisdom, because they spoke with great gravitas and wore expensive suits and had impressive credentials and spoke with great authority and now we have over twenty trillion dollars in federal debt which very likely will be paid off with highly inflated dollars which crush the value of our own savings into worthlessness.

Then we will find out that the experts were every one of them marching stark naked in a blizzard and no one had paid attention to the foolish children snickering and pointing and exclaiming at the naked fools in the snow.

So let the federal government run out of money, and grimly rejoice as Department after department shuts down and interest on the debt is unpaid as that would would do the best of all things: drive the federal government out of the credit markets for decades. There is no good way out of the mess we voters and non-voters alike have created for ourselves, and we are the ones who should suffer for our irresponsible voting habits and submission to the Wisdom of Experts. Better sooner than later, when the debt is forty trillion or fifty, because we were too foolish and submissive to bring down the Experts when the debt was three trillion, or when it was five trillion, or when it was ten trillion, or even fifteen.

If we continue to submit to the Wisdom of Experts with Gravitas, the eventual result may make the Terror of the French Revolution look mild, and none of us needs that.

WaPo on the emerging budget deal.

Putting An Anti-Undocumented Immigrant Hater In His Place

You apparently don’t understand: the US doesn’t produce enough native-born scofflaws, so we have to import foreign-born scofflaws to make up the shortage.

In order to be sure we aren’t wasting our tax dollars on law-abiding immigrants, we have to be sure we are importing actual scofflaws. The best way to do that is start with people whose very first act, crossing the border, is illegal. That way we know they have the right attitude.

The best kind of scofflaw is one who grew up in a country and culture which understands that rule of law is a scam to prevent dishonest people from getting ahead in life. They get here already understanding that government exists for the purpose of separating the poor from as much of their earnings as possible, and if we lure enough such people into the country with immediate subsidies, they will overwhelm the outdated rule of law attitudes of the local Americans and law-abiding immigrants who bothered to get green cards.

You gotta get with the program or else we will never join the poverty stricken countries which rightfully dominate the world.

Look at California: those people understand the importance of having no respect for the rule of law, and it shows up in the results.

In barely a generation they have gone from an exemplar of law-abiding Western Civilization middle class prosperity right back to noble Third World ultra-stratified poverty stricken masses with a tiny group of stunningly rich on the coast.

You need to understand that we can make the same achievement, but only if we put our minds to it, and repudiate lawful behavior. We need more scofflaws to show us the way. Almost a third of prisoners are Scofflaw-Americans. Well, actually Scofflaw-Hondurans, Scofflaw-Mexicans, Scofflaw-Guatemalans, and so forth. The real shortage today may actually be Scofflaw-Iranians and Scofflaw-Arabs, and people like you with your negative attitudes toward the Constitutional right of hostile foreigners to come here at will is a large part of the problem.

As our revered Senator Mazie Hirono said: “Just shut up.” Learn your place in society. You aren’t here to tell people like Maizie that you are dissatisfied with her policies. Your place is to ‘just shut up’. Or else.

And stop being so hide bound: pay your local legislators a few bucks under the table now and then when you need something done. Just like in Third World countries. Working together, we can do it!

"What is a country club approach to politics?"

My response to an inquiry:


"What is a country club approach to politics?"


'I am a lady or gentleman and I shall not engage with the rabble on their terms, no matter what it costs me."

One of the problems common to Republicans is their extreme hostility to fighting political street fights except by following Queensbury rules. There is only one rule in street fighting: 1) There are no other rules.

Remember the first Indiana Jones movie when a giant muscular Arab in the street twirls a scimitar to threaten Indiana Jones? Did Indiana pull out his own knife and fight the guy in fair fight? No. He pulled out a great big revolver and shot the guy. That's a street fight.

Gentlemen automatically lose street fights because they are more concerned with being gentlemen than they are with winning.

John McCain, Mitt Romney, all of Trump's primary opponents, were more committed to seeing themselves and being seen as gentleman than they were were in winning. They were all in street fights, so they all lost.

Romney was at a complete loss in 2012 when he, probably the most decent man to run for high office in our lifetimes, was routinely denounced as a Nazi, a hater and a despicable human being.

He had not the foggiest idea how to respond other than to maintain his gentlemanly attitude and deny it. He was the archetypal Nice Guy, and the old saying is 'Show me a nice guy and I'll show you a loser.' One NEVER wants to be called a nice guy by a street fighter, because he is explicitly calling one a loser. 'Explicitly' because all street fighters know the saying.

Trump was the only Republican to understand that he was in a street fight and to relish it. Like him or despise him, he was the only Republican with a shadow of a chance of defeating Clinton.

The upside is that while our opponents around the world are street fighters, even actual street fighters, Trump's delight in street fighting made him the only Republican qualified to take them on.

The Republicans finally nominated a street fighter, and by golly, he won.

How did that Romney presidency turn out? Oh....yeah....

Why Should We Give The 'Dreamers' Citizenship?

If you think we should offer citizenship to illegal aliens, even just those who were brought here illegally by their parents, I think you should re-think the long term consequences of rewarding illegal behavior.

Do you think we have so few native born scofflaws in the country that we need to import foreign scofflaws to break our laws?

Should we reward the parents who knowingly broke the law by bringing their children here illegally by giving their children citizenship?

Do you think we should tell the law-abiding citizens and immigrants that they are fools for being law-abiding? Should we tell our children that obeying the law is optional?

Or should we tell the illegals bluntly that those who have legal problems now because their parents brought them illegally have no one but their parents to blame? That is who is responsible for the so-called Dreamers' problems: their parents, and those of you who think that bad behavior deserves to be rewarded.

The children aren't victims of the United States of America: they are victims of their parents' decision to break our laws.

If you think we would be a better country if we threw away the rule of law, and publicly reward law breakers for breaking laws, you go right ahead, but you are the problem, not the solution.

My brother-in-law came here legally, and eventually became a citizen. Are you going to stand up and tell him and the rest of law-abiding America that he was a fool for obeying the law? When you give citizenship to people who broke the law, that is exactly what you are doing, loud and clear.

How long will this be a good country when our legislators publicly announce to the law-abiding -and their children- that obeying the law is for fools?

8 U.S. Code § 1182 - Inadmissible aliens

Yes, President Trump DOES have the legal authority to stop people coming in from other countries. Any people, all people, any country, all countries.

That pesky 8 U.S. Code § 1182 - Inadmissible aliens
"(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President.
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. Whenever the Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed to comply with regulations of the Attorney General relating to requirements of airlines for the detection of fraudulent documents used by passengers traveling to the United States (including the training of personnel in such detection), the Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens transported to the United States by such airline."
This is not a new law: It was enacted in 1952. IIRC, Jimmy Carter used pesky 8 U.S. Code § 1182 (f) to prohibit the entry of certain Iranians aka "any class of aliens", and to track down some lranians aka "any class of aliens" already here legally and deport them.

Source

Will Progressives Re-think Their Struggle For Greater Federal Power?

I doubt it: Greater federal power is what progressives are for.

Several years ago -back in 2013, in fact- I started asking lovers of gun bans, particularly AR-type guns, who would contemptuously dismiss any claim for need for Americans to be armed as the ravings of the lunatic Right: "Would any sane German in 1913 have said it was even possible that within the remaining lifetime of an already middle-aged German, the German government, government of one of the most educationally, philosophically, and industrially advanced countries on Earth, would build extermination factories and run over 6,000,000 innocent people through them?"

Yet that is exactly what happened. It took only 25 years to descend from the pinnacles of European culture into the Holocaust.

I was interested to find that nearly all responded with "That cannot happen here, because THIS IS AMERICA!" Apparently the phrase "This is America" is a magic talisman against evil, even among those who like to harp on the evils that America has participated in, harped in some cases to the point that one might think they considered America the rightful predecessor and inheritor of Naziism.

Yes, chanting 'THIS IS AMERICA' will surely protect us forever from the all powerful state which has surveillance drones, satellite surveillance, GPS enabled cell phones, GPS enabled automobiles, self-driving automobiles which might someday be hacked by federal law to deliver us to the appropriate authorities, NSA recording all email and telephone calls' meta-data in the world (is it still only the meta-data? Was it ever? If so, must it remain so limited?), recording of all financial transactions involving a check, credit, or debit card -at the same time we are moving away from the financial privacy of cash, and $100 bills with less buying power than a $20 bill in 1973-, military armored vehicles distributed to police forces great and small, a political party already with a demonstrated history of claiming to the Supreme Court that the 1st Amendment allows criminalization of a movie criticizing a politician during an election campaign? And claims that the government could ban any such book as well? (If you doubt that, read about "Citizens United", for the Administration did in fact make the claim in oral arguments that they could ban a book criticizing Hillary Clinton, just as the movie criticized her.)

Will Progressives re-think their commitment to ever greater federal power? I doubt it, because ever greater federal power is exactly what Progressives want.

But of course, a Holocaust can't happen here because THIS IS AMERICA.

One Law For The Little People, No Law For The Ubermenschen?

I'll be very interested to see what Bill and Hillary Clinton can charge for speeches and books from here on out.

Even more interested to see if they are ghost written by their cell mates.

Many people will say that prosecuting and imprisoning the whole gang would tear the country apart. I agree, but confirming to the law-abiding middle class that the Ubermenchen are just too important to be held to the same standards as the little people would be far, far worse. Prosecution would be highly salutary.

My guess: Obama will pardon them before he leaves office. Maybe a few little people will see some prison time, but the Clintons will retire with scores of millions in crooked gains, proving again that there is one set of laws for the Little People, and no laws for the Ubermenschen.

Election Day 2016

If you think the last year has been awful, wait for the next four to make it look like The Good Old Days. No matter who wins.

When government controls every part of the economy, every part of our lives, who is in charge becomes surpassingly important. Boys MUST be allowed to shower with the girls, Citizen, or else. Your inefficient 85 cent lightbulb is a federal offense, Citizen, because our donor's efficient $25 bulb hasn't been selling well. Your suburban street sign does not meet our specs, Citizen: Take them all down and replace them. Or else. Air a movie or publish a book criticizing Hillary Clinton, Citizen? To prison with you. Yes, that was what 'Citizens United' was about.

Either the people who are tired of dictates which have no constitutional authorization lose, in which case they will remain...tired, or they will win, in which case the people making a great deal of money off dictates will be screaming "Nazi slave raiders at the gate!" until they are back in control.

So it doesn't matter all that much who wins today: somebody will see themselves as losing something important, and the next four years will be far more hate filled than the last year. Plan on losing friends and family.

My Proposed Constitutional Amendment

Frankly, I think that high government officials who claim the right to simply 're-interpret' Constitutional provisions out of existence should get fair trials for treason, followed by imprisonment or swift and public hangings, but that is unlikely to happen. Don't like the Constitution as it stands: amend it. Don't think you can get that done? Tough beans.

I'd approve this proposed Constitutional Amendment, which I wrote:

"Any legislator voting into law a bill later found not constitutionally authorized, shall be imprisoned not less than one year, nor more than five. Any legislator voting in favor of a law later found to be Constitutionally prohibited shall be imprisoned for not less than five years nor more than twenty. Any executive signing into law any such bill shall suffer the same penalty. (Hi, George Bush of McCain-Feingold) Sentences for multiple offenses shall run consecutively. These penalties shall apply to federal, state, county and municipal legislators and executives. Violators shall be exempt from pardon.

A defense against the charge of assault or murder of a public official shall consist of proof the legislator or executive voted for or signed into law a Constitutionally prohibited bill."

Put THAT into the Constitution and the SOBs will pay attention to their responsibilities. No personal costs: No respect. Would it paralyze the governments at every level? I hope so: that is it's purpose. Don't worry: you know what chance of passage it has.

Donald Trump' Unredeemable Deplorables Are Getting Very, Very Angry

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong: ""The emergence of Donald Trump as a political force reflects a mood of growing discontent about immigration, globalization and the distribution of wealth," write analysts at Fathom Consulting".

Trump support is about discontent with illegal immigrants, illegal immigrants getting massive subsidies with taxpayers' tax money, illegal immigrants undercutting wages commanded by legal immigrants and low/no skilled Americans alike, a perception that our leaders sold out entire workforces with trade deals designed to pour money into the correct people's undeserving pockets, and political direction of wealth to the correct people ie big political donors at the expense of the people who have earned that money in the marketplace.

Can't sell your obviously superior product for $35 because your century old competitors sell their inferior product for 86 cents? Get the federal government to ban your competitors' products. Trump support is a result of the politicization of every aspect of life by Republicans and Democrats alike: Refuse a cake order at your baker: Face bankruptcy. Refuse a photography job? Bankruptcy. Believe that people with two X chromosomes are female and people with a Y chromosome are male? The federal government is coming for you just as they have already come for others. You will submit to the dictates of your obvious superiors or be bankrupted and jailed because you are too stupid, ignorant, and smelly to be allowed to run your own lives, peasants.

THAT is why Trump has supporters, and if "analysts" are so removed from reality that they blame racism, sexism, and xenophobia for resentment at being bullied and fleeced by sniggering elites, we shall continue seeing more of the same until some non-trivial part of the people who own 300,000,000 guns may just decide that since the elites have openly torn up the social contract, that contract no longer applies to them either.

Like the peasants or despise them, Americans have spent the last decade arming like it is 1775, and if one thing is clear, they hold both major political parties in the same contempt in which the parties hold them.

A Trump presidency would likely be disastrous, but a Clinton presidency might just bring on an armed revolt. No one in their right mind should look forward to that, but from the sounds of the blithering 'analysts' they don't understand just what thin ice they are dancing on, because they don't even understand they are on ice.

Enormous numbers of people have been screwed by Republican and Democratic Party politicians alike, and Hillary Clinton's response is to call them deplorable and unredeemable. The Republicans and Democrats alike agree with her, and that should be a scary thing indeed because the unredeemable deplorables are getting very, very angry with sniggering elites, and they are very, very heavily armed.

Hold the unredeemable deplorables in all the contempt you like, but understand that when enough of them decide that politicians are too corrupt to be removed by the peaceful political process, there are 300,000,000 guns with which to do the job, and that can only end in calamity for all of us. Piss in an armed mob's face at your own sniggering risk.

PS: Agree with this ICE official or not, you ought to be able to recognize why such information angers the peasants.

Barack Obama: Manchurian Candidate

Once upon a time I accepted that, as Barack Obama's supporters claimed, he was exceptionally bright, highly educated, highly informed, and that I merely disagreed to a polar degree with almost everything he said.

Given that I still accept he is bright, highly educated, and well-informed, I cannot cut him any slack for being stupid or ignorant, but given his actions over more than 7 years, I now accept that he is and always has been working for the other side.

Red Diaper Baby? Yes.
Had a Communist Party of Hawaii mentor in high school? Yes.
Introduced to the political community by bomb building revolutionary communists? Yes.
Spent 20 years in the church of a man who shouts "God DAMN America"? Yes.
Describes his grandmother as "a typical white person"? Yes.
Before he has any reliable information, claims "The police acted stupidly"? Yes.
Told all American entrepreneurs: "You didn't build that"? Yes.
Suggested we would be a better country if Henry Ford through Bill Gates had quit work when they had amassed several million dollars, and devoted their lives to community organizing? Yes.
Turned Iraq over to ISIS? Yes.
Allowed ISIS to take over large swaths of Syria and Libya? Yes.
Allowed ISIS to capture enormous quantities of US military gear? Yes.
Condemns Christians for the Crusades? Yes.
Demands we allow ever more Muslims into the country? Yes.
Sent guns to the Mexican Drug Cartel, some at taxpayer expense? Yes.
Turned over $150 billion to the world's biggest sponsor of terrorism? Yes.
Looks at Muslim Supremacist slaughter across the country and demands we disarm all potential victims? Yes.

What does it take to break through our denial of what the man is: An anti-American, pro-Islamist, Manchurian Candidate?

Barack Obama is working for the other side.

The Clinton Foundation: Efficient Spender, but Maybe Corrupt Fund Raiser?

According to this article, the Clinton Foundation operates pretty efficiently as a charity.

Buried is this, though, which is a different matter, of course:

It’s true, as Willis said, that Charity Navigator put the Clinton Foundation on its “watch list,” but not because of concerns about insufficient funds going toward charity. Mainly, it was put on the watch list due to questions raised in the media about foreign donations to the foundation and the potential for quid pro quo when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.

In any case, it makes some useful points about how the Foundation operates, raising doubts about some of the accusations made by critics. They may be spending wisely and efficiently, but raising some of their money corruptly. Or not.

The question of influence peddling will expand exponentially if Hillary Clinton becomes President.

The Presidential Election

I still haven't decided who to vote for.

I was planning on a syphilitic goat, but it occurred to me that drafting Nicolas Maduro might get things over sooner: No toilet paper, no refrigerators working because there is power only two days a week, but that is OK because there is no food to put in them, raids and trashing of newspaper offices, and even the fleets of 747s flying in inflationary currency from Europe have stopped because the printers don't trust Maduro to pay them with REAL money.

I grant that Hillary would make a decent stand in for either, especially now that she has actually gone on record explicitly calling for a constitutional amendment to allow prosecuting people who criticize politicians.

On the other hand, there is no reason in Hawaii to vote: The Democrat will win.

Worst political class since 1855, and we know where that took us.

I am a little surprised that even with Sanders' and Trump's popularity, the leaders in both parties seem utterly unaware of just how incredibly angry average people are with them. Given the level of political education in US high schools and colleges, I have ever less trouble believing we will eventually respond to overweening politicians and their bureaucrats with an even more totalitarian leader. No matter how incompetent, no matter how corrupt politicians and their acolytes prove themselves to be, the public response is to demand they have ever more power to abuse.

Hillary will probably win, she may get her amendment, then the incumbent politicians will set up criteria for deciding which groups are 'legitimate' news organizations exempt from the ban on criticizing incumbent politicians, and all which apply for that exemption will be scrutinized for political subservience. Those like the Tea Party will be denied news licenses, and if any accidentally receive one, it can be revoked.

Just like any proper banana republic.

Saludad a nuestro Líder Suprema!

Bernie Sanders' Daily News Interview

I've read several times that Bernie Sanders' Daily News interview was a disaster for Sanders. I disagree only because almost no one will read it.

Bernie Sanders' depth of ignorance on his own key issues is abyssal.

His vague responses to the questions about the banking industry are downright Trumpian: We will hire the best people to figure that out. The banks must have broken laws, I have no idea which laws they broke but they must have broken them. I know it. So we would prosecute them. And break them up. I don't know how we would do that, or what they would look like afterwards, but they are destroying America so we would break them up. It's fair.

One of Bernie Sanders' points on guns, which he should know something about since it is a major issue with Democrats:

"What we do is do away with the straw man provision, where you can buy a gun legally and then sell it to somebody who's a criminal. "

This is the kind of ignorance of existing law which is worthy of a professional gun banner. It is a felony to buy a gun for the purpose of selling it to a prohibited person. If a person who is allowed to buy a gun does so for the purpose of selling or giving it to a felon, the purchase itself is not legal: It is already a felony.

So Bernie thinks that straw man purchases are legal, when they are already a federal felony. Selling it to a felon is a separate felony. The felon taking possession is a separate felony. Providing ammunition to a felon is a separate felony The felon possessing ammunition is a separate felony. Bernie, however, apparently thinks that buying guns and ammunition for the purpose of providing them to prohibited persons is perfectly legal under "the straw man provision"...and probably because of the evil influence of The Protocols of the Elders of the NRA.

If this guy's supporters stay politically engaged, I look forward to the US achieving the economic fairness and prosperity of Venezuela: No gas, no toilet paper, shutting down all businesses for a day a week because there is no electricity, bread lines, and raids on newspaper offices.

Quite lengthy, and damning if anyone reads it: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/transcript-bernie-sanders-meets-news-editorial-board-article-1.2588306

Much shorter is the paper's commentary about the interview: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/james-kirchick-bernie-stoner-college-roommate-article-1.2591052

"But ask him a real question? Nine times out of 10, the wind-up doll has no answer. When Sanders did occasionally muster coherent answers to questions, he was usually wrong."

Totally Fair Tax

In this joyous election season, I propose a Totally Fair Tax:

No matter who wins the election, anyone who votes Democrat pays a 73% flat tax, and anyone who votes Republican pays a 15% flat tax.

Let everyone put their own wallet where their ideology lies, and see what happens.

Did Senator Ted "Waitress Sandwich" Kennedy commit treason?

So, Did Senator Ted "Waitress Sandwich" Kennedy commit treason in an effort to influence the 1984 presidential election?

Even in a jaded world, it is breathtaking to discover a U.S. senator — brother of a former president — actively and secretly collaborating with Soviet leaders in an attempt to undermine the president of the United States’ nuclear defense policy during the height of the cold war.

Especially when that brother was murdered by a Soviet sympathizing communist. But what's a brother when a presidential election is on?

According to a letter written by KGB head Viktor Chebrikov to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, former Sen. John V. Tunney went to Russia to give the Soviets information to strengthen their hand in nuclear negotiations with the Reagan Administration. Whatever the reason, shouldn't this reasonably be considered treason?

If the Chebrikov memo is to be believed, Kennedy "asked for a meeting later that summer in order “to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA.”"

More here.

Did Boehner Ever Intend To Stop Obama's Amnesty For Illegals?

I doubt it: I think John Boehner's whole patter was a scam from the get-go.

I think Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ) got it about right when he said of the Republican leadership's cave to Il Duce Obama on amnesty for lawbreakers:

This isn’t just an action that has passed through this body that I disagree with. This is an unlawful, unconstitutional order given by the President of the United States to his administration. This action deliberately sabotages our laws, allowing individuals who Congress has expressly mandated be expelled from our nation to stay, to live as citizens, and to hold jobs.

We don't have enough scofflaws in the US: We must attract more from other countries. Law abiding, low-skilled and unskilled American workers make too much money: We must undercut their earning power by bringing in more unskilled scofflaws.

Is Boehner A Fraud? Is Boehner Pro-Amnesty?

I see two possible explanations for Boehnor's handing of the bill funding Department of Homeland Security: Boehner is an idiot for starting this with no Plan B, or he has no intention of stopping the amnesty, and never did: all this is a show. Too many big Republican donors want cheap labor, and they are delighted to screw American low skilled workers to get it. Boehnor is catering to the donors.

If he wanted to make it more difficult for Obama to claim Republicans shut down DHS, he should have the same bill passed again. Let Obama veto it. Then immediately pass it once more. Let Obama veto it. Again. Again, again, each time announcing that President Obama is shutting down DHS, AND announcing that the 'news' media are Democrats with bylines who cannot be trusted in anything they say, shilling for Obama. Announce both those things every single time. Say it loud and say it often.

Repeat. The media will have to cover the accusations of shilling: they will not be able to avoid it. It cannot make them any more hostile toward Republicans: They are already partisan Democrats.

Put THEM on the defensive for a change. Announce: "The 'news' media and the Democratic Party are one and the same." Loud and often.

Boehnor will not do this because I think this whole charade is exactly that: a scam to make conservatives think he is trying to stop amnesty.

Throw the bum out, and send a check to the Democratic National Committee for his first year's official membership in the Party.

Obama’s Historical Legacy

Charles Kesler, editor of the Claremont Review of Books, one of 53 historians interviewed by the New York Magazine:

what...will matter...to future historians? The manner of Obamacare’s passage told the story—a party-line vote, reeking of special-interest side deals, on an unpopular, indigestible, multi-thousand-page love letter to bureaucracy, crudely packaged as a reconciliation bill to avoid filibuster, and falsely sold, in read-my-lips promises that would come back to haunt Obama, as the most conservative possible approach to health-care reform. This was liberalism à outrance—its last desperate surge to win at any cost what it could no longer even imagine winning honestly and on the merits.