D'ya Think?: Potpourri | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: Jim Bispo's weekly column appears in the Beaufort Observer.

    We hear that as many as 30 states have petitioned to secede from the Union.. Do you suppose those are really the states asking or is it some nut from the state posting the petitions?? It seems fairly clear that the ability to secede from the United States has already been settled. On very bloody battle fields.

    If enough states want to secede and form their own separate country or join with other seceding states to form a new Union, the way to go about it would be for the states to call a constitutional convention in accordance with Article V (there's a first time for everything) and adopt an amendment to the constitution which authorizes secession. Many of the Southern States would also have to alter their own constitution to remove the restrictions on succession added to the constitution of each of the Confederate states (I am told) following the war between the states.

    Once that amendment is in place, then they should be able to proceed unimpeded by the Judiciary. Only the blue (unarmed??) states would stand in the way. Perhaps this time we would end up with a victory. With a victory, we should be able to leave behind all the debt the "blue states" have run up on us. We should also be able to get the government out of trying to control our every activity and get back to governing based on our "old" constitution which hopefully will be tweaked so as to provide for a truly limited "federal" government (no more "General Welfare" nonsense as a constitutional "justification" for doing anything we want to). Back to the "old - original" constitution before it became a "living thing" under the auspices of Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and our current Prez, to name a few of the worst offenders.

    Bill Clinton will not likely be happy to hear that he didn't come close to measuring up to the foregoing folks. At least he seemed to focus on taking care of America in addition to taking care of himself. Now Hillary is quite something else. She may be smarter than either Willie or the Prez. Yeah but... She would clearly seem to be as sly as the Prez (the current one). Perhaps she learned that from watching him dodge responsibility for anything and everything that looked as though it could go even mildly wrong. The technique she seems to have developed for dodging responsibility is to go visiting when there are hard questions to answer. Does that give you any insight as to how she reportedly got to be the most traveled Secretary of State in our history?? No comment as to what we have seen of her honesty as compared to both Willie and the Anointed One.

    Speaking of staying on the road a lot, how about the Prez and the $180,000.00 per flight hour that AF-1 costs to run (which makes the tab a lot closer to $500,000.00 per flight hour - my estimate - by the time you factor in all the support people and aircraft who accompany him). Do you suppose the discontinued White House tours will come anywhere close to covering that expense?? Nah... But they probably could if you used the Prez.' way of calculating savings. Hmmm...

    We all know that Bill had a "roving eye" (as the old song goes). But now we are left to wonder if the same can be said of the current Prez. First we hear Ms. Obama talk about being a "single mother" (Freudian slip??); then we see the Prez heading out of town (ostensibly to campaign for something or other) almost every week; and then we hear the Prez telling us that the California AG is the prettiest one in the nation. Wow!! He later apologized to AG Harris. I would have expected that Michelle should have been the person to whom he apologized. (A quick call to Willie might have been order to get some idea of what might work best with the lady of the house).

    Click here to read the article accompanying the photo to the right in the April 5 Darlene Superville Associated Press article on this subject.

    Before we find fault with him over his ill considered remark, someone needs to check to see if he simply read that off his Teleprompter or if it was but another of the gaffes he is so prone to make when the Teleprompter is not telling him what to say. Hmmm... Regardless, I would argue that if the words came out of his mouth, the Teleprompter not withstanding, they become his words. If he doesn't want to own them, he should not say them.. But then he has shown us just how adept he is at disowning mistakes - even his own. I don't know if the following statement was coined by the Prez, but I would not find it difficult to believe that it was: If he is ever forced to admit a mistake (don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen) his reaction is surely going to be something like this: "That's the second mistake I ever made. They first one was once when I thought I was wrong." Hmmm...

    And now, how about the Prez and his 5% salary "give back". Presumably his money goes back to the Treasury. He has really started something. Reportedly a lot of his staff are now giving up some of their salary also. The big difference is that they are reportedly contributing their 5% to their favorite charity. We have no way of knowing if that is more or less than their "normal" contributions to charity (if any). In any case it surely will be a tax deduction for them next tax season. Well, isn't that nice... Just think; if any of them were Mormon, they could be handing over 10%. (One more thing for them not to like about the Mormons.)

    We can only wonder how those contributions help to stem the red ink that has been flowing since the Prez came to power or how it helps to reduce the debt. Short answer ; It doesn't do either!!

    What the entire drill amounts to is a rather poorly timed and even more poorly executed effort to make the administration look like a bunch of "good guys" (that would be generic "guys"). It would really be interesting to see how much 5% of what the Prez (and his wife) really cost the taxpayers each year would turn out to be.

    D'ya Think??