Obama's salmon joke was the best thing in the SOTUS last night: the only point of humor in the speech, one too in which he was playing to the Tea Party's argument that government has gotten too big, and we don't need any more things like Obamacare with its thousands of new agents in the IRS, and its fines on individual citizens, and its violation of the Commerce Clause, and the way it was slammed through the Congress and down the consumer's throat. It was a great moment:
"The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they're in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them when they're in saltwater," Obama said. "I hear it gets even more complicated once they're smoked."
Many have said around the web that they enjoyed this humor, and who wouldn't? It's a good capture of the absurd nature of government, and its vast Orwellian networks of control, and their arbitrary and irrational boundaries accountable to no one.
But in spite of his saying that he wants to cut down on Orwellian redundancy, we here at Lutheran Surrealism wondered what this means for the Interior Department and the Commerce Department. Surely there is a good rationale for the separation of jurisdiction. Materials lying outside of our national boundaries can hardly be controlled by the Interior Department. And if he tries to cut back the Interior Department and make the Commerce Department bigger, what then, especially if the salmon cross state boundaries, then he couldn't put the fish under the control of the Commerce Department because wouldn't that violate the Commerce Clause? What exactly had Obama actually proposed? Did he really mean something serious about smoked salmon, or was that just a cloud of nonsense? Who controls smoked salmon? I assume it's the FDA, among others. Was he planning to do away with the FDA so that salmonella poisoning could seep into our food?
I couldn't sort it out. Was he going to actually cut a government department? If so, how? It would be nice if he had followed up his joke with an actual suggestion to cut the bureaucracy somewhere, and if he named someone who would lose their job, and provided us with a rationale for this cut, and how it would actually serve American interests. But as usual, he told us a joke, and then went on to how he wasn't going to get rid of Obamacare, but was instead going to multiply healthcare costs to the country's businesses by mandating insurance, and building a whole new department of oversight. The whole thing struck me as fishy.
In the Parmenides, Plato defines the Sophist as a slippery fish who cannot be caught by any net. Sophists WERE funny from time to time, I guess, especially if they did not get into the government of ancient Athens (by law they couldn't because they were not native-born Athenians who could produce a certificate of live birth).
4 comments:
Strange dream that I was in the White House and was friends with Obama. He was a very pleasant man. Outside the White House was a gigantic swimming pool and you could dive off the balcony and take a wild current around the building, sort of like an immense water park. His kids and my kids were playing together, everyone was happy.
A friend of mine is in Rotary Club, and sent me this with regard to how he thinks we should think about government bills, and laws:
The Rotarians have a "Four-Way Test" of the things we
think say and do:
Is it the truth?, Is it Fair to all concerned?, Will it build Goodwill
and Better Friendships, Will it be Beneficial to all concerned?
Most think the healthcare bill is built on stealthcare lies. That is, that it has all kinds of secret trap doors in it. There were originally actual prison sentences for those who didn't pay up. Now it's only fines. There were originally 16,000 new IRS agents, or agents within the IRS, to spy upon, and catch those who didn't pay up. This was not foregrounded in the bill itself, but it sics a virtual army of tax collectors on America.
If you multiply their salaries (starting at let's say 50,000 plus perqs) so that the round number for each agent, you're talking about 100,000 per agent. Multiply that by 16,000, and you're back in the billions and billions, plus the courts, and other agencies.
So, is it good for all concerned?
No, but it's good for the federal government and its Cyclopsean mandates, which will grow that much more big. Bad probably for private insurance companies.
Bad for doctors, many of whom say they will leave the system.
We can already see that it didn't build goodwill. It built a house of paranoia, and it built the Tea Party, which is dedicated more than anything else to bringing down the House of Pain called Stealthcare.
When Obama attacks the fishiness of salmon and the way they skirt the boundaries of various agencies through their nomadic runs, it's fairly clear he didn't mean to actually do anything about this. He was just running interference, and sidetracking us from his real concern, which is building a house of pain for fat cats.
He and his wife claim they want to cut government fat.
I think most of us would welcome this.
I liked his last two major speeches -- his speech at Tucson was extremely good. The SOTUS speech had his more cagey qualities again on display (he's an intensely secretive man who says one thing and does another).
We'll see.
According to a Wikipedia article about Stealthcare,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States
The uninsured cost us 35 billion per year.
We have the 42nd best healthcare in the world.
However, we have the greatest number of obese people by a long shot, and obesity is what's damaging us.
Every fifth American has a mental health issue.
The best off are not whites, but Asian Americans, followed by whites, and then the rest.
Also, we have tremendous medical malpractice costs.
In Finland, for instance, there is a cap on lawsuits that goes up to about $20 thousand dollars. That amount would be chump change in this country.
So, two key points: thin people down. If they are within the BMI, they should get substantial tax breaks (I don't think you can legally penalize fatsos, but you can probably give bonuses to those who are maintaining their shape).
Also, put a cap on medical lawsuits.
Forget about salmon, and think about something that actually matters.
Maybe he'll just imprison the salmon unless they stay within one jurisdiction.
Or perhaps try to expand one government division so that it includes absolutely everything.
The department of absolutely everything.
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