Publisher's Note: Jim Bispo's weekly column appears in the Beaufort Observer.
With the stroke of a pen the Anointed one has created a climate change task force. I suppose if one properly interprets the term "general Welfare" appearing in the Preamble of the Constitution they could find authority for running the government with nothing but Executive Orders. (It seems to be General Welfare that both the Congress and the Executive use as justification to do virtually anything they want to.) Maybe, if Rand Paul succeeds in getting a Constitutional Convention convened, we should delete "general welfare" from the preamble (and anywhere else it may appear).
The Prez appointed mostly Dems (surely climate change disciples) to the task force. We can only wonder if there is any reason that Al G. was left off the panel. Maybe the Government couldn't afford him. Or maybe undisguised hypocrites weren't allowed. Or maybe at some time or other he offended Michelle - or perhaps Valerie Jarrett. Oh well... We are probably all better off for his not having been included.
Do you suppose that this is simply another Anointed One "Misdirection" intended to distract our attention from Benghazi, Gun Walking, IRS transgressions (especially in light of the latest revelations that good 'ol Lois L. allegedly committed a fairly serious violation of law when she made available to the Federal Election Commission private taxpayer information that she should not have released - in response to an FEC request for only information that, by law, is publically available?? And how about the ObamaCare rollout fiasco?? And how about the heartfelt (??) Katherine Sebelius "apology" to the Congress and the American people that she didn't even read very well?? Her reading skills don't seem to be much better than Harry Reid's (nor is the substance of what she preaches). And how about the Anointed One and his now qualified "...you can keep your health insurance. Period" speech?? Hmmm...
For a long time I have been saying that we need to parse everything the Anointed One says very carefully. The job got several orders of magnitude more difficult this week with the latest "You can keep your health insurance" qualifier. Now we are faced with parsing things that he didn't say. It keeps getting worse and worse...
How about the NSA activities that the Anointed One only learned about when he read it in the papers?? Give me a break. Do you suppose if we could cancel all the WH newspaper subscriptions we might have a chance of getting better excuses?? But then what we are currently getting may be the best the WH staff can do. Or perhaps that's the best that they think they need to do. Hmmm...
If this Administration has shown that they are good at anything, it is avoiding responsibility. They deny. They obfuscate. They change the subject. They lie when the other ruses don't seem to be working - and sometimes before the ruses have even had a chance to work. Sometimes the lies are "plausible" as Thomas Sowell has opined. Sometimes, they are "outright" as when Susan Rice makes the rounds of all the Sunday "talk shows" giving us the Administration's talking points (none of which were true) concerning Benghazi. And where do you suppose the Secretary of State was when Ms. Rice was making the tour of the Sunday talk shows??. Don't tell me, she was sitting by the phone waiting for a 3:00a.m. call. Of course she was.. Sometimes coincidences can be amazing. Take for example, the coincidence that it seemed as though every time there was some unpleasantness involving the Sate Department, she was out of town (or scheduled to go) spreading good will...Is it any surprise that she was one of the most traveled Secretaries of State ever??. Henry Kissinger with all his détente travels may have done more and, of course John whatshisname (the current Secretary in case you were wondering) would seem to be working hard at matching Hil in the travel department... We can only wonder how much global warming they left in their wake as the result of all their globe trotting...
Anyway, if the Climate Change Task Force comes up with recommendations that are anywhere near realistic or remotely controversial they will likely meet the same fate as did the results of the Bowles/Simpson Task Force. On the other hand, if they come up with another way for the feds to walk all over the Tenth Amendment and take control over even more of our lives, there will surely be dancing in the halls at the White House... It would be truly interesting and enlightening if the panel even tries to explain how the five ice ages (according to Wikipedia) that enveloped the earth at one time or another disappeared without the "help" of man. It would probably be blasphemous to suggest that the coming and goings may have been part of a cyclical pattern of events in nature. Hmmm...
The global warming "settled science" would seem to have gotten settled by fiat - not fact. There are those who suggest that the so called "settled science" involves little more than jumping from a hypothesis to a conclusion. A classic case. It has had two rather unpleasant effects. The first is a lot of folks believe it. The second is it has enabled the ever supercilious Al G. to become very rich while all the while spouting untold amounts of CO2 from the jets he rides all over the world in search of converts (and speaking fees).
The point is that misdirection and changing the subject are strategies that we need to be on the watch for lest the Anointed One whistle another one past us. If we aren't careful, before his term is up, the entire country will be run under the "authority" of Executive Orders and the Constitution will be entirely in shreds. The E.O.s will likely come at a rate that will turn public discussion and conversation away form the Administration's overreaches, transgressions and other shortcomings. In the meantime, we need to be particularly on watch for an Executive Order cancelling or overriding the XXII Amendment.
D'ya think??
