Welcome to the King’s States of America

The stupes in Congress are apparently  doing it again.  Via Lucianne.com, we see that Congress is passing the “Presidential Efficiency and Streamlining Act” which will eliminate much of the Senatorial oversight of presidential appointments.

There is a clause in the Constitution that says the president can appoint subordinates with the ‘Advice and Consent’ of the Senate.  There was a reason for that clause.  It was to ensure that the managers who report to the president are first and foremost working for the People of the United States.  This prevents the Cabinet from becoming a Royal Court beholden and loyal only to the King, a position the founders really didn’t want to see again.  With the Presidential Efficiency and Streamlining Act, present and future kings presidents can surround themselves with vassals loyal and subservient only to them.  This is taking the stinking corruption of the czars that too many presidents have used and Obama has put on steroids and institutionalizing the practice.

The solution to dragged out appointments is for the president to appoint less controversial appointments.  Obama is not looking for managers to run the affairs of the country.  He is promoting co-conspirators to warp the country into his image.  He’s not looking for competence.  He’s looking for personal loyalty to himself and his animosity to everything that made the United States great.  It is exactly the Senate’s job to say, “No.  Try again.  And why don’t you get a resume next time.”

The President wears two hats.  One is the honorific of Head of State which has all the power and influence of the impotent European monarchs.  At diplomatic affairs, the President gets to sit at the head table with the other heads of state instead of at the kiddy table with the Prime Ministers.  The other job is as the Chief Executive of the Executive Branch.  Not of the government.  The Legislature and Judiciary are supposed to be independent, although it would be easy to think otherwise nowadays.  Not the country.  State governors do not answer to the president.  Nor do the People.  The President does not get to make the country in His own image.

Let me say it again (because I’ve said it before).  The President of the United States is not a King.

The United States does not have a King.

The United States does not want a King.

The United States does not need a King.

Somebody please inform those useless dimwits in Congress.

Blinded

So…how many children have to be impaled on stakes to get a death sentence applied to a football team by the NCAA since apparently just being impaled isn’t sufficient cause?

I have to wonder how much the obsession with sports has contributed to the Higher Education Bubble because of the total distraction it has become to the real purpose of “Institutions of Higher Education”…which is academics.

Sports is supposed to build character.  Now it just builds empires of power and money and all the stinking corruption that goes with it.  They might as well start paying the college players and make them staff.  It’s ludicrous to pretend that college sports is amateur.

Bittersweet

Getting ready to make my second pilgrimage to the aviation Mecca of the Experimental Aircraft Association AirVenture  in Oshkosh, WI.  Even though I haven’t flown (like, as a pilot) for twenty six years, aviation/aerospace is still my main interest.  Despite the fact that the family/father/financial reality thing  has pretty much put the kibosh on my flying plans until sometime in my next lifetime.  <sigh>

The bitter part is seeing how general aviation has withered since my flying days.  The airport I learned to fly at is closed.  It’s soybeans now (dry ones at that).  Most of the airports that I flew to are almost empty now.  Where there used to be lines of airplanes on the ramps, now there are only a few…or none.  Admittedly, the price of airplanes has gone up enough that most people probably keep their investments in hangers and shelters, there aren’t that many of those either.

For eons, homo sapiens were stuck on the ground watching birds with envy.  For a mere instant in the ages of the Earth, humans have been able to fly with the birds, freed from the ground.  Unfortunately, for that same century, the intellectual putrescence of Progressivism has sought to impose another Dark Age where their is no room for the freedom to fly.  The goal of the regulatory state is to crush out any conceivable form of freedom.  Every act in the regulatory state is either mandated or prohibited, eliminating any opportunity to choose an independent course of action.  The regulators have tried to ban guns and failed to date.  They are trying to dictate everything people eat.  They have almost succeeded in regulating little airplanes out of existence.  Just too much freedom going on there.

So I go not knowing if it is really a celebration of the freedom of flight, or its eulogy.  A last glimmer of light before the sunset.

Q: What do pretty much all mass shootings have in common?

A:  They occur in “gun free zones”.

How’s that “gun free zone” thing working out for ya’, pilgrim?  In the reality based world, “Gun free zone” = “Free fire zone for bad guys”, aka: If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns in the theater.

Q:  Why was it that these mass shootings never happened in the past?

A: In the past, at least half the people in the room would have been packing and would not have hesitated to let the shooter know what they thought of his choice of targets.

Q:  Why didn’t anyone stop the “Joker” shooter?

A:  Sigh.  Because a Progressive society teaches people to run and cower.   That’s why they want people unarmed.  There’s no way the Joker could have shot as many people as he did if half a dozen people had rushed him.  Six people out of 300? He absolutely wouldn’t have been standing there changing magazines if there had been a smidgen of opposition.  I expect to see the public school system start to teach self defense classes in 3…2…

Hah.  Had you going.  Can you imagine a public school class in self defense?  The public school system teaches people to be victims.  Quite successfully I might add.  People willing to stand up for themselves don’t need to be wards of the government.  They might even oppose their Masters’ will.  Can’t have any of that going around.

Time to crucify the EPA?

I had actually contemplated something like this but only had a boring name like “sunset rule” or something.  Fortunately, Our Moral and Intellectual Superior, The High Holier Than Thou (THHTT) Richard Armendariz came to the assistance (as Our Moral and Intellectual Superiors claim is always their goal) of my impaired naming function.

THHTT Armendariz, if you’ll recall, gained some notoriety some time back by having the misfortune of being caught on video discussing telling the truth (always a bad thing for Leftists) about how the Environmental Protection Agency is aided by the use of Ancient Roman terror tactics to coerce (enslave) compliance by the dreg classes (anyone or anything not of the political overlord class)

There are a myriad sets of rules and observations about the inevitable decline of bureaucratic organizations.  What I had come up with was that the way for an enterprise (in this case, the US government) to avoid bureaucratic bloat is to disestablish and if it seems appropriate, replace aging agencies.  Basically, create new agencies with expiration dates hard coded into their charters.  There is a whole host of alphabet agencies that could use replacing.  NASA is a perfect example.  When NASA was created, it lead some of the greatest expeditions and achievements of humankind.  It has since become a monument to waste and bloat that makes the Pentagon look nimble and svelte.  One of the problems is that the NASA administrator really doesn’t run it.  NASA is dominated by the facility administrators.  Each has what amounts to a Red Phone direct line to their congressional delegation.  If an administrator threatens a facility administrator’s empire, they get uncomfortable calls from people who control NASA’s purse strings.  The solution is not to to replace another figurehead administrator, but to build a new organization,

So, the EPA is overdue for termination.  It has become dominated by anti-human enviro whacks who’s agenda is not the well being of the United States or its citizens.  It doesn’t matter who the president is or really who runs congress, because these people permeate the organization.

Someone pointed out that we are governed by dead people.  There are uncountable laws, rules and regulations on the books.  Very rarely do new statutes supersede old laws.  Usually they are just added, the accumulation forever reducing our freedoms.  Yet the bulk of laws still being largely written by people who have moved on.  The EPA was a solution dreamed up half a century ago.  Maybe it’s time to try a different approach?  As long as the institutional inertia of the existing agency is allowed to carry out the primary function of a bureaucracy, i.e, preserve itself in perpetuity no major reform will happen.   This

Even in medicine, sometimes all medications need to be stopped to try to identify what problems are actual patient problems and what problems are just the proliferation of drugs acting together.

Let’s try closing the EPA and delegating its responsibilities to the various state environmental organizations.  Then address the remaining issues anew.  It is the 21st Century.  The environmental attitudes are far different than they used to be.

So it’s time to hang the EPA on a cross as a lesson to the other bureaucracies.

NO, NOT RYAN!!!

Reminder: The Vice President has absolutely NO power in the United States except breaking tie votes in the Senate.

Period.

Descriptions of the Vice President as a deputy or Assistant to the president are wrong. At most, they can be advisers. But they don’t have to be VP to do that. The only real job of the VP is to take the P’s pulse regularly. When they can’t find it, they become the P.

Ryan needs to stay in the House where he stands a good chance of getting a committee chairmanship, or even a Speakership where he would have real influence. Besides, The Opinionator’s Rules of Presidents is they should be governors first. NEVER pick a congress critter to run for president. Look what we got last time.

Game changing VP options

1.  David Petraeus.

2.  Bobby Jindal.

3.  Sarah Palin.

If Romney picked Petraeus, Obama would announce that he wants to go back to Chicago to spend more time with the family (despite the fact that he lives with them at the office now.)  Bobby Jindal would make the Democrats have to throw the entire Asian population of the United States into the ‘racist white Asian’ identify group (like George Zimmerman was the ‘racist white hispanic’ in order to justify his legal lynching).  And Palin…it would win him the election because even with their illegal ballot box stuffing, dead voting Democratic electorate, there wouldn’t be enough liberals left alive after all their heads exploded to elect a dog catcher in a small town.

John Roberts is why people hate lawyers

Roberts’ rationalization of why the government can enslave the population through taxation is an excellent example of mealy mouthed legalistic mumbo jumbo that makes people not trust lawyers.

It may not be the Courts’ responsibility to protect Legislature or Executive branches from their own stupidity and incompetence.  It may not even be the Courts’ responsibility to protect the electorate from their laziness, shortsightedness and lack of interest.  But it is not the responsibility of the Court created by the Constitution to go out of its way to make up the excuses for an abusive Legislature.

So under the Roberts’ decision, it is still unconstitutional for Congress to make laws abridging freedom of speech, but is it unconstitutional for Congress to tax speech it disapproves of?  Or conversely, can Congress ‘tax’ people who do not say what Congress mandates to say?

Since liberals have no love of that freedom of speech clause in the Constitution, let’s use an example that they might identify with.  Infanticide is the inalienable right of women granted by no clause of the Constitution.  But it’s there.  They swear.  So no state can ban abortions.  But since the power to tax somehow is completely divorced from the behavior it affects, can a state tax abortion?  How about a $Billion tax on abortion services.  Per event.  Paid by the provider so it couldn’t be construed as interfering with the mother’s rights.  I bet that would change liberals’ perception of the ‘Taxation’ clause.

And now a question for the Chief ‘Justice’…what makes you think that the people who created the Constitution, who survived the American Revolution, who brought forth on this continent a new country conceived in liberty, would put in a clause giving the government unlimited power to tax?  Really?  The entire American Revolution started AS A TAX REVOLT!  If they believed in an all powerful, abusive government…they could have stayed British subjects.

So allow me to say that the Supreme Court’s decision, that is your decision, on the Affordable Care Act is a major fail.  Good job.  Your place in history is secure and the Leftists love you…for now.

Drudge Missed One

Mat Drudge is the master of the juxtaposition.  However, today, July 7, he missed a great opportunity.  The headline read, “From Boil To Broil” with a picture of the flaming sky he’s been using.  But down in the columns he has, “Britain facing ‘worst ever’ summer; cold wet weather blighting Olympics…”

How do you break 4,500 temperature records during a single heat wave?  By using lots of measuring stations that didn’t exist in the 1950s (record high in St. Louis was 115° in 1954) and especially the 1930s (The Dust Bowl days?  You may have heard of them.) when it was REALLY hot.

Yeah, it’s hot here.  We’re supposed to hit 108° in St. Louis today.  Ouch.  This is a particularly hot dry summer…so far.  We’ve had them before.  In the ’60s, I endured 10 days in a row over 100 degrees in a house with a single window air conditioner and five of us living in that room.  Last summer we almost drowned (figuratively speaking).  I had to do some extensive engineering to try and control the flooding in the basement.  This summer is England’s turn for a rainy summer.  Dear GlowBull Warning Religionists.   It’s called weather, and there is nothing you can do about it but improvise, adapt and overcome.

PS:  Even if it was ‘Climate Change’…there’s still nothing you can do about it.  The climate has always changed.  It’s what nature does.