Please put away the jar.

[No Elephants]

Greek myth of Sybil: The gods cursed Sybil--I've forgotten why. The curse was that she would obsessively predict the future correctly, but no one would believe her. Eventually, Sybil was shunned until she dwindled to just a voice, still making predictions, whereupon, someone trapped her disembodied voice in a jar and sealed it. And Sybil was never heard from again, literally.

Though the myth doesn't specify more than that, my theory is that the Greeks hated Sybil, not because of her accurate predictions, but because Sybil could not resist saying, "I told you so."

Sometimes, neither can I.

I was searching DU for something else entirely, when I came across a post of mine that I do not remember making.



The SCOTUS made its decision on Obamacare on June 28, 2011. The decision surprised many people.

Almost exactly two and a half years before that, on December 21, 2009, I made this post during a DU discussion of how the SCOTUS might rule on the individual mandate:

Government's mandating that you buy something from government is very different from


government mandating that you buy something from private companies.

Government can also tax you. Whether it can tax you more for not buying from private companies is another issue. IMO, it should not be able to, but the Republican SCOTUS may think differently. See Replies 68 and 69.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4193124 (Reply 74.)



Where I went wrong, of course, was that my assumption that the Republican-nominated Justices would be the ones to decide that the federal government has constitutional power to make Americans buy things from private companies. Instead, it was the four Democrat-nominated Justices, plus Roberts.

But, I was right that the taxing power would be the issue, even though, right up to the Supreme Court, the Obama administration was saying that the penalty was not a tax (an argument by government that Roberts mentioned in his opinion, but rejected).

Other posts on the same thread predicted that the individual mandate would be struck down under the 5th 10th and 14th amendments, even the first (freedom of association) and 4th. I believe I am the only one who suggested the mandate might be upheld because of the taxing power.

Then again, poster La Pera (Reply 38 on the same thread) had a pretty clear vision, too. He or she was not predicting the future, but describing the past in a way that, as to Lieberman, I came to only recently. I now believe that Lieberman got to be the obstacle to cloture because he was not going to run again anyway. La Pera saw that four years before I did. So, bueno, La Pera.

Geez. I have to pay more attention to DU posts--including my own apparently. I still don't remember coming up with the taxing power bit.

[Enthusiast]

1. That was a great discussion.

"Government's mandating that you buy something from government is very different from government mandating that you buy something from private companies."

Ain't that the truth. It's as if that ruling enshrined privatization. Or took it to an entirely higher level. Maybe it officially transformed us into a Fascist state.

I liked all your posts in that thread. We knew we had been betrayed. Unfortunately the betrayal has only increased since.

I told you we would see actions designed to depress the midterm Democratic voter turnout in 2014 just as we had in 2010. One was the failed rollout of the ACA website. There will be more of these little disappointments.

[No Elephants]

2. Well, the WH proposal to decrease corporate tax may well

depress the liberal vote. Not such a little disappointment, either.

Truthfully, I don't know how much more the vote can be depressed.

And, as you well know, there is a movement not to vote at all. Supposedly, this will take legitimacy away from government. LOL.

I don't agree with it. Even if I did agree with it, it will never work. Nothing could have kept me away from the polls when I reached voting age. Even as recently as 2008, I was so excited to vote that I was on line before 6 am--and I was far from first in line, either.

Usually, I vote after people who have regular work hours have gone to work, so I don't needlessly make it harder for them to vote. But, I just could not wait in 2008. Kids, huh?

[No Elephants]

3. P.S. Yes, it was a good discussion.

When I check out DU now, I don't seem many as good as that anymore. Also, maybe it's my imagination, but the DU board seems slower than it used to.

It's funny. Russ Feingold said the Administration was responsible for no public option, and Feingold is gone now. Wiener got Pelosi to promise that she would let HR 676 come to a vote, and Weiner is gone now. Kucinich was a hold out against Obama and Kucinich is gone now.

[Enthusiast]

4. Liberals are inconvenient for the objectives of the plutocracy.

Or Fascist Republic, or whatever it is. They have a way of disappearing. They also lose their TV voice, like Olbermann and Donahue.

[No Elephants]

5. And Cenk Uygur.

[Enthusiast]

6. Yes, Cenk.