Schedule Kerflaffle 20120831

View 690 Wednesday, August 31, 2011

The day was devoured by locusts. It’s late now, and tomorrow morning I have an appointment to be driven to a studio in Del Rey to talk about Robert Heinlein., so I will be late tomorrow.

As I write this, the Speaker has not acquiesced in the President’s request for a Joint Session of Congress. The President can’t demand, he can only request. The Constitutional Framers were all familiar with the history of the English Civil War leading to the execution of Charles I in 1648, and the establishment of the Commonwealth under Protector Oliver Cromwell: and how Cromwell dismissed Parliament by sending troops into the House of Commons. That was as long before the Convention of 1787 as the Civil War was before our time, but the historical memory was vivid among all educated English.

I don’t think any Speaker has ever rejected a President’s request for a Joint Session, but I don’t think any President has ever requested such a session to be held at the same time as a debate among presidential candidates. It was a very curious request, given that the debate has been scheduled for weeks. Perhaps Obama was unaware? Not at all hard to believe, why should he know about schedules of debates he won’t be in, but even so, someone among his advisors should have known. Rush Limbaugh thinks it was deliberate, and that the White House staff were having a grand old time laughing it up. The President wants to present his JOBS program. He wants to read it from his teleprompter with the entire Congress waiting breathlessly to hear it. The people will be waiting expectantly. And no one will hear the Republican candidates debate, or see Perry in action. Ain’t that funny! Have another drink. Snark, snark. And it’s the President, and about JOBS, and boy did we get a horse on them with this one! A college stunt.

We will see how this plays out. The Speaker may well refuse to give the President that date. There will then be political recriminations and accusations. Some will wonder why the President is in such a hurry, only it’s not that – after all, it’s next week. We don’t even have a budget. And why he couldn’t have his people call the Speaker’s people to arrange a mutually convenient date. Others will say the Speaker wouldn’t have refused the request from a white President, it’s only because he’s Black that they dare to do this. And each side will accuse the other of being divisive. Such is the state of the Republic. Fortunately that is a long way from slaughter in the streets and proscription lists.

I see that they have agreed that the Joint Session will be held Thursday,

Bacteria Causing ‘Black Death’ Likely Extinct, Study Finds

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/08/30/bacteria-causing-black-death-likely-extinct-study-finds/?test=latestnews

Which is great news, if true. I just hope there is no possibility of any spores or other survival of the Black Death from the corpses they examined. It seems unlikely. They would have to be dormant for a very long time. And we have antibiotics now, at least until resistant strains of Plague develop. The return of the Black Death has been the subject of many science fiction novels, and of course La Peste was one of Camus’s great works. And we don’t have so many rat fleas around now. Or do we?

President Obama is going to present his economic recovery plan in a week. I have already presented mine, but I’ll try to write up a refined version before Obama speaks.

The question that must be answered is, what’s more important, reducing CO2 emission in the US (it isn’t likely to be reduced world wide), or restoring the US economy. California is committing economic suicide and the Green Regulations are part of the deal.