How's the old Chinese curse go?

May you live in interesting times.

It does seem we are. I've also been doing some interesting reading today.

I've been reading about nullification. Not the concept of Jury Nullification. But the concept and history of State Nullification. A couple of articles, one from Wikipedia and the other from Answers.com, give a good outline of the 1832 Nullification Controversy. But if you're lazy, the upshot is South Carolina, angry over some tariffs imposed by the federal government enacted a law stating that the Federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and unenforceable inside the state.

It's an interesting concept. And it's been popping up over the blogosphere more and more recently with regards to the manufactured Health Care Crisis and the bill they forced down our collective throat over Christmas.

A few quick articles.

Time to Reconsider Nullification

Health Care Nullification: Things have just gotten underway

Health Care Nullification and Interposition

It's an interesting idea for truly interesting times. Here are a couple of thoughts that occurred to me though. First, historically speaking the Nullification Crisis of 1832 was a very radical move by one of the most extreme states in the union. And it led to the Force Bill authorizing the federal government to use whatever force it deemed necessary to enforce tariffs. Which led to a precedent that states didn't have a right to secede and ultimately to the civil war.

(Yes, that's an extreme oversimplification and I'm glossing over a lot of factors, but I'm not here to talk about the Civil War of 1861 just yet.)

But anyway, since the Nullification Crisis a lot of legislation and an entire war have been fought over state powers and federal powers. Can the concept of State Nullification be argued successfully in the courts anymore? Because ultimately State Nullification is a legislative maneuver and the end of that process is the courts, whether it be state or federal courts.

Second, again historically speaking, this leads to a lot of nasty business like civil wars and other shenanigans. Are we willing to make that commitment? There are any number of people out there that are already banging on that particular drum. But there is sometimes a large chasm between talking the talk and walking the walk. And it's a deadly path to walk indeed. I'm not saying that something like that isn't needed every now and again. I'm just saying you'd better be damn sure about that decision.

Getting away from the history for a bit. We've had calls for marches on D.C., general national strikes, calls for immediate challenges to this Christmas bill in state and federal courts, not to mention the more extreme calls from fringy type peoples. Surprisingly from both the left and the right. How effective any of these will be is up to history to tell. I do think that no single attack will work. Only by effective coordinated efforts on multiple fronts will this administration, that has proven that it wont listen to the people it receives it's power from, be forced to abide by the limits that the founding fathers placed on it with the constitution.

Oh, and in case you didn't know. The rest of that supposed Chinese curse is:

May you come to the attention of those in authority (sometimes
rendered May the government be aware of you)

May you find what you are looking for

Christmas Traditions...

Mine are the traditional Christmas meal of Chinese food at the only buffet open on Christmas day and watching KungFu movies all day.

What are yours?

QOTD: Secession Primer.

*... That period during which Mr. Buchanan retained office, after the election of Mr. Lincoln, from November, 1860 to March, 1861, was that which enabled the seceding States of the South to complete their preparations for the Civil War, and the Executive Government was paralyzed.

How it's made.

Great show.

But as fascinating as it is, it's the only show on TV that is guaranteed to make me fall asleep. Can't figure that out.

Am I taking crazy pills here?

I was reading something the other day, it's not important what, the the following passage caught my attention;

The President is chosen for four years, and he may be reelected; so that the chances of a prolonged administration may inspire him with hopeful undertakings for the public good, and with the means of carrying them into execution.

Nice, huh.

The same thought might be applied to senators and representatives as well, no? That they would, with an eye on getting reelected might weigh their actions in office wisely and with care. It seems to me that the opposite is true of our current crop. They are shoving legislation down our throats, with out regard, for we people that they supposedly represent as if they don't care that they have elections coming up in 11 months. There seems to be an attitude of "Damn them all, let's get what we can, while we can."

When you ponder on the caliber of men like Jefferson, Payne, Madison, Washington, Hancock, et. al.

Have we really gone from the age of Gentlemen/Statesmen to Pirate/Politicians?

BoVLB awards, The Health Care Edition.

It's been a while since I awarded a BoVLB. Oh, there have been lots of stupid stuff flying about. But nothing really tripped my trigger so to speak to award the trophy again. This weekend though. Oh, this weekend...

I hereby award the BoVLB travelling trophy to two recipients this time. Our winners this time? Why none other than Sen. Ben Nelson (D, Nebraska) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D, Louisiana). It seems these two intrepid renegade democrats stood by they're moral and political objections to the "Universal Health Care" bill, or whatever it's called this hour. Well, stood by till the cash till rang up 100,000,000 dollars each. That's one hundred million dollars for you non-math types. Yes sir, each Senator managed to wring a little more blood out of each and every taxpayer in this country. One of the truly epic things about this is they, over one snowed in weekend in DC, managed to screw everyone in this country down to our grandchildren's and great grandchildren's generations. Take that Wilt Chamberlain.

So, for these two members of the "no pork" party, the "transparency" government, signed off on a bill that no one except select members of ONE party has seen.

Here's to you. Enjoy the trophy.

Ain't the innerwebz grand?

I hear they're putting it on computers now even!

h/t to the illustrious phlegmmy for this one.

You can now send e-postcards to the ISS teams. Cool huh. Don't forget the ground crews. Without them, it couldn't happen.

Happy Christmas everybody.

Random Musings

Apparently, the actors inside the Godzilla suit for the Japanese movies had a habit of nearly suffocating.


Whoever thought it would be a good idea to take the king sized candy bars and just stick two fun sized ones in the wrapper needs to be taken out back and shot... slowly. When I buy a king sized bar, I WANT a king sized bar. Not some under grown thing they call "fun" sized. What is that anyway? Did some team of cross-discipline scientists and engineers get together, spend millions of government research money and measure fun? I can see it now. "Yes, Senator. We've finally broken through the glee barrier and quantified fun. This is exactly one unit of fun. Now about next years funding..." And those stupid fun sized bars are smaller cross sectional than the king sized bars used to be! If I'd wanted a fun sized bar, I would have gone to the store and bought a bag of fun sized bars. Not gotten ripped off at the vending machine for two of them. You know what, shooting that asshat slowly is too good for him. He needs to be stood up before a firing squad while being drawn and quartered for life.


A team of mathematicians at MIT submitted a geometric proof today that may very well turn the universe on it's ear. It took 12 of them 5 years, but they think they've proven that there is exactly 12.421 lbs of fruitcake on the entire planet and it just keeps getting passed around from person to person. The implications are astounding. The corollary law of conservation of fruitcake is being examined by the team of physicists that first postulated the 1st Law Of Bacon: Bacon can be neither created nor destroyed it can only GET IN MY BELLAH!

Tis the season.

Okay, it's rounding out to THAT time of year again. So, as I annually do, please accept the following.

To all my liberal acquaintances;

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday(tm), practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all . . . and a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great, (not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country or is the only "AMERICA" in the western hemisphere), and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual orientation of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion oft he wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher

And to all my conservative friends.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

In the Realm of Good News.

I've seen this article on several news sites now.

Tenn. demonstrates trend of looser guns laws in about half the states; NRA is behind the push

Go RTW as they say. The only problem I have with this is the last clause. The NRA has often times struck me as the slow witted, foot dragging Gomer of the constitutional rights crowd.

Personally, I'd really place the push on the average person being tired putting up with the "They're just misunderstood", "Give them what they want and they wont kill you... probably" crowd.

Interesting times indeed.

I saw this over at Breda's place this morning.

Tea Party tops GOP on Three-Way Generic Ballot

The money paragraph for me was:

For this survey, the respondents were asked to assume that the Tea Party movement organized as a new political party. In practical terms, it is unlikely that a true third-party option would perform as well as the polling data indicates. The rules of the election process—written by Republicans and Democrats--provide substantial advantages for the two established major parties. The more conventional route in the United States is for a potential third-party force to overtake one of the existing parties.

(Emphasis mine)

Sort of like how the socialists took over the democratic party?

Shenanigate revisited.

Just a quick linky-no thinky post today.

UN Climate Chief: hacked e-mails are damaging.

The part I love is right in the first paragraph. "... but said evidence of a global warming is solid."

Um, Baghdad-bob, the emails and code pretty much prove that the evidence is a vapor.

(By the way, this post is just to see if my troll will come back out of his hidey hole again. If we're very still we might see him again.)

Experts on foreign affairs.

Okay, now that the furor has died down about the latest leg of the presidential world apology tour (tm).

Sure, he bowed to foreign dignitaries and leaders again. Sure, he shouldn't do that. He's supposedly the leader of nominally the most powerful nation in the world. No presidents have bowed or scraped to other leaders before, or at least not in the last 100 years or so. I'll give you all that.

Here's what bothers me so much.

The first time he did this, to the Leader of Saudi Arabia I believe, the amount of stink that raised went on for weeks. You would have figured that the handlers he surrounded himself with would have learned from that mistake. And don't think for a minute that it wasn't a mistake. He may have done it on purpose, but it was a mistake and on an international scale to boot.

Then, he does it again. The same mistake over again.

Let's ignore for a second that he was touted as some sort of expert on foreign relations. Disregard the fact that the second round of bows weren't the proper short from the waist ones that national leaders might be expect to do. They were the exact same sort of bows that were such the mistakes the last time.

Folks, what bothers me is the fact that this administration ISN'T learning from it's mistakes. That's the sobering thought for tonight. What other sorts of mistakes are we gonna see this lot make AND REPEAT?