Adaptive Curmudgeon

Don’t let the whiners and their creeping weakness get to you.  Our nation is just as awesome as ever.

I have no idea of the ultimate source of this image. I like to think Uncle Sam ventured to hell and carved it on the skull of Stalin’s soul; before coming back for a frosty brew and a fireworks display. I simply linked to where I found it.

From WWII. In keeping with our capitalist nation, this poster is for sale. In keeping with tradition, I don’t get squat if you buy it. Linked to seller.

Of course, my all time favorite, Rosie the Riveter. You tell ’em Rosie!

Make noise and celebrate, for today we commemorate a most improbable event.  A bunch of rednecks bumpkins told the most powerful Monarch in Europe to get off the damn lawn.  Once they survived that little roll of the dice they created the freest nation on earth.

While you’re pondering that, go read the Declaration Of Independence (it’s short, it won’t kill you).  Feel the tone of it.  The folks who wrote it were not interested in consensus, appeasement, or avoiding conflict.

It isn’t Stuxnet but for some reason my spell check keeps deciding I’m British.  It defaults to favourite instead of favorite.  (And it flags my proper redneck spelling as incorrect.  The nerve!)  It probably thinks I drive a lorry and crap in a loo.   WTF?

As a certified British individual I have used the Queen’s authority to commandeer your computer. I will not let it go until you renounce your ownership of a Dodge.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

[Editor’s note: this was supposed to go live before the Supreme’s made their announcement.  So much for my scheduling program…]

The Supreme Court is inches away from deep sixing the whole Obamacare debacle. Wow! Dare I hope?

No!

The Supremes (like the Federal Government and the voters who created it) have gotten into the habit of having their cake and eating it too. Given the duty to make a tough call they’ll do their best to split the difference.  Here’s an example of looking at a hard decision and bravely deciding to wimp out:

In 2003 the Supremes declared that “affirmative action will be wrong at some future date possibly about 25 years from now but it’s just hunky dory now”.

Got that?  It’s bad and evil in the future.  It’s good and noble now.  Who thinks like that? They had to come up with an answer that is either yes or no and they said “whatever we think is cool is the right thing to do so long as we keep feeling groovy about it”.  Which is the kind of answer I expect from a six year old and not a wise counsel of highly trained thinkers.

This is why even if Obamacare created a police force that kidnapped surgeons and forced them to do elective surgery against your will, on your dog, at midnight, on your kitchen table, while humming showtunes… the Supremes will find some part of it to retain. The Supremes can be just as wishy washy as the general populace. Robes or not, they’re just making shit up.

In the case of Obamacare the tragic question the Supremes face is “where is the line?”. The answer is “in the rear view mirror”.  That’s the problem.  Once you’re drunk, naked, and puking in a gutter in Tijuana how do you logically decide if the next beer is one too many?

Consider the true silliness of their current dilemma; “if not buying insurance is interstate commerce what activity (or absence of it) isn’t interstate commerce”?  In a sane world you wouldn’t have to even ponder such horseshit. In a sane world interstate commerce is damn well commerce that’s interstate.  Commerce is something bought or sold, like a truckload of toasters.  Commerce is not interstate until the truck goes hurtling across a damn state line and not a minute sooner.  That’s what interstate commerce is.  What the hell else would it be?

Ahh…such a shame they can’t say that because they (and all of us) have filled the basket of “what the hell else would it be” with “everything” and they’ve either got to grow balls of steel and strike it down with a death blow or keep muddling in the mess created over generations.  Hard problem!  Not a new one either.  They’ve been playing games in the name of interstate commerce forever.  Here’s one example:

Growing wheat on your own land for your own use is Interstate Commerce.

Got that? Even if nothing is sold it’s commerce.  Even if nothing leaves your property it’s interstate.  Go back and read those last two sentences.  I didn’t make it up.  Smart people wearing robes said so.  They were playing the game as far back as 1942.

Interstate commerce, like herpes, is the gift that keeps on giving.  The court debate pondered “Can you be forced to by broccoli? What about funeral services?”  What about other things that somehow passed muster?  They once used interstate commerce to mandate 55 MPH speed limits.  I think it was the basis of the CFL lights regulations.  It’s used for everything.  People decide what they want to do for (inflict on) the people and interstate commerce is pasted on the top as a default endless justification.

To me, and lots of people, our government has limits. Let me repeat that; there are things the American government ought not and cannot legally, do.  In theory the Supremes would more or less agree and therefore make predictable decisions.  Life could be simple.

However, the limit has been exceeded so commonly that it’s an object of consideration whether my proctology exam is both interstate and commerce.  You have to think real hard to make that an actual reasonable idea.  Which leads to a patented Curmudgeonly Gem Of Insight:

“People with flexible morality can construct logic to justify doing whatever they want to do. The logic will be flawed but that’s irrelevant.  This is as true of the Supreme Court as it is of anyone else.”

The trick to all of this is to recognize a wrong action (regardless of how totally cool it might be and how noble your intentions) and don’t do it.  It’s not easy but it beats weaving webs about interstate commerce.

As I type this post a handful of robe clad deep thinkers are pondering the matter of Federally socialized medicine in America. I am cautiously hopeful that the Supreme Court can (and will) nudge the train back toward the rails. But hope is thin soup, if they do, I will be not merely delighted but surprised.

One of the reasons I started this blog was Obamacare. I doubted the true believers could exercise restraint before they went too far. I was correct. The 2009 Christmas Eve vote on Obamacare was so much overreach that if it has been written in a work of fiction it would have been unbelievable.  Here’s what I had to say about it:

The last time the Senate held a roll call on Christmas Eve was in 1895. (They lifted a ban on former Confederate soldiers serving in the Post-Civil war U.S. military.) What was the reason for the recent historic, first in 114 years, life or death, gotta’ happen now on Christmas Eve vote? World War I? World War II? The Wall Street Crash of 1929? Nope. It was a health care vote during a brief window of time when the Democrats had a solid majority.

The faithful were hell bent on expanding the Government’s control over private lives even they self immolated in the process. They did expand the Government’s control over private lives.  They did (partially) self immolate.  They haven’t given up.  They never will.  The show isn’t over yet.

A blog was not my first idea. My first idea was Obamacare Bingo. I made cards with some of the most insane predictions I could imagine. Off the wall, batshit crazy, utterly unhinged, “unexpected consequences” of socialized medicine. I intended to print Bingo cards with a ridiculous event in each square and distribute them to several friends. Nothing, no matter how utterly stupid, was too weird for the cards. That’s what made them funny. (Don’t ask, I’m not giving out the cards.) As the complex system yielded “unexpected” (to some) results the block would be marked. A card written years in advance would make swirling the drain that much funnier. Imagine the possibilities!

I’d check off events block by block until someone shouted “bingo”. At which time I’d… uh celebrate? (I never had an idea how I’d celebrate … only that foolishness would ensue.)

Think I’m wrong? How about this; one bingo block prediction was “old nuns and monks who work for a church will have to pay for one of the following; abortions, birth control pills, a sex change operation. Bonus if it’s a minor. Double bonus if someone gets fired or excommunicated.” It took less than two years for a kerfluffle about workers at church operated hospitals to hit the birth control mandate.

Ridiculous right? Yet I saw it years before Nanci Pelosi signed it so she could see what’s in it. Amusingly, I wasn’t thinking crazy enough. Could I have imagined a block that said “a Harvard law student will testify before Congress that birth control pills are too expensive. Rush Limbaugh will be hammered for making fun of her”? I couldn’t imagine it; too weird. But it happened. Once you create an unconstrained system there’s no limit to it’s inanity.

Alas, instead of making millions on Obamacare Bingo I wrote a blog. I’ve mostly ignored Obamacare choosing instead to whip the Volt like a red headed stepchild. Why not? The Volt is funny in a way that thousands of pages of minutiae isn’t.

So, will the Supremes kill my bingo game? I suppose the news will hit soon. But (before the Supremes rule) I’ll post part II with my theory that it’s not time to break out the champaign yet.

In 2010 I’d had enough of the Congressional tittering flapdoodle as they tried (for reasons beyond logic or responsibility) to address the most important issue of the day; doping in baseball. Quoth the Curmudgeon:

“Roger Clemens.  You are hereby recognized as an unfortunate victim of a Congressional shafting.”

Well it’s two years later.  Congress has yet to pass a proper budget, the Federal debt is now $15,802,157,239,345.78, nobody sane owns a Volt, Solyndra never paid back my $8.79, Greece is having tantrums, and…  Roger Clemens is a free man.  Excellent choice of priorities you elected congressweasels; would you like some salt for that wound you’ve self inflicted?

Comin’ right up:

“With Monday’s acquittal of charges that Clemens lied to Congress in 2008 when he insisted he never used performance-enhancing drugs during his 24-year big league career, Americans across all boundaries came together as one. Republicans and Democrats, tea partiers and Occupiers, Christians and Jews, blacks and whites, dog lovers and cat lovers, nuns and death row inmates — all could hold hands and sing in one loud, harmonious voice, ‘What the hell is our government doing?'”

By the way I’d like to take a moment to reflect on our system of justice.  Roger Clemens was spared because he had a fair trial by jury.  A full thundering herd of farcical yahoos in suits decided a dopehead baseball player was an easy target for legalistic bullying but a “jury of his peers” cut the shit and told them to mind their own business.  It took an act of congress to hose Clemens.  It took 12 jurors to straighten that business out good and solid.  Sometimes the system works just right.

The following video is posted without comment: