09:33 – The new walk is finished, and Barbara is delighted with it. It looked like it would rain all yesterday afternoon and evening, but all we got was a couple of minutes of very light sprinkle several hours after they poured the walk, enough to dampen the street slightly but not to wet things under the trees.
With the two conflicting court decisions yesterday, it looks like ObamaCare is headed back to SCOTUS. Given that SCOTUS has ruled several times recently against Obama’s attempts to legislate, things look pretty dim for ObamaCare subsidies in the 36 states that don’t operate their own health care exchanges. I saw a moronic AP article in the paper this morning that said health care premiums on the federal exchange would increase by 76%. What they really meant to say–at least if they understood basic arithmetic–is that premiums on the federal exchange will more than quadruple. The average policy holder on the federal exchange is paying 24% of the cost of the policy out-of-pocket, with the subsidy paying the remaining 76%. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. SCOTUS has no sympathy for Obama’s attempts to usurp the right of Congress to legislate. There’s no chance that Obama can push his changes through Congress right now, and things will only get harder for him after the elections. I think Obama’s best option at this point would be to assassinate the four or five more conservative justices and appoint progressives in their places.