Re: Obama’s ‘Unprecedented’ Remarks: Is the President Running Against the Supreme Cou
Again, your failure to grasp the argument must be very very frustrating for you. It's like a puppy trying to grab a treat from the table. He jumps and jumps and jumps, but his little legs just can't lift him high enough!
So AGAIN ... I (and the Supreme Court) make the distinction between directly regulating interstate commerce (i.e. the health insurance market) and regulating things -- like home sales -- that might have an INDIRECT affect on interstate commerce.
Stop running away from the argument. It was the central point of the Lopez case which you have cited but apparently don't understand. It is the difference that distinguishes Lopez from the mandate case. So you can see how snarky comments that miss the point aren't earning you a lot of points. Nor is stupidly conflating the regulation of home sales (local) with the regulation of mortgage banking (national).
There are times when I wonder if what I think is abject dishonesty on your part stems more from just saying whatever you have to say at the moment and not even caring what you said before.
This is what you said:
It's hard to imagine anything LESS connected to interstate commerce than the sale of a house (provided it's not a mobile home).
To which I was responding. All of your other bull**** has to do with the strawmen you want to raise about it, not what I said.
Health care itself is intrastate, too. It happens locally. You go to your doctor or hospital and you rarely ever cross state lines to do it. Everything that happens, happens in-state.
Thus, it's very much like buying a home.
Buying a home is every bit as "connected to" interstate commerce as going to a doctor or hospital -- health care -- is, not least because of the financing.
The financing is currently in crisis, just as, supposedly, health care financing is. This can be alleviated in part by forcing people to engage in the market, just as the mandate is supposed to do for health care financing.
It's an apples-to-apples comparison. The mechanism for one works with the other.
You, of course, will never, ever agree, but denying it doesn't mean it isn't true. It just means you refuse to acknowledge it. And I get why you would -- because it shows a very real, and very unpalatable, implication of the arguments you're making. Uncomfortable with it? Perhaps you should take a wider view before you commit to the arguments.
Never mind that the idea that the housing market
isn't connected to interstate commerce SHOULD be laughable on its face.
(Oh, and as for Lopez, which I didn't bring up here, but it didn't stop you from attributing it to me anyway -- the regulated activity which was considered not to have enough of an effect didn't involve buying anything or participating in commerce of
any kind. Unlike, of course, buying a home and participating in the financing market. This, I'm sure, will be one of your famous "distinctions without a difference.")