(ENS Socotra at left, having received his certificate of completion from NIOBC in accordance with NETC regulations. Photo Socotra.)

It was a huge weekend. It cascaded from bright sunshine at the beach on Friday morning to dark clouds on Sunday. I woke Friday to the sound of a Jodie Call from a formation of naval personnel jogging on the beach below my window at the old BOQ, enough of a flash-back to old times in Pensacola that I sat bolt upright in bed.

The ceremony was brisk and efficient, and by ten the Navy had 23 new intelligence specialists, and I was on the road, preparing for a conference call taken at the wheel. I hate I-64 and I-95, home of the most ill-mannered of American drivers, and so I bailed to cut over at Yorktown to US-17, a much more relaxed, if slower, roadway.

Driving past the field where Cornwallis had to surrender to Washington’s rag-tag Continentals always gives me some perspective on things, though the pace of change seems to have got out of control.

A couple hours later I was peering suspiciously at the pump at the Wawa fuel plaza near Tappahannock. I was in the Bluesmobile, ferrying it back from the Beach where my son has been using it for the last five months. It is a big-block Ford V8 police engine, which I suspect could burn fish oil, but in the Hubrismobile I am vulnerable.

Apparently the Feds have permitted the oil and gas people to start peddling something called E15- a blend of gas that has fifteen percent ethanol content by volume. Testing on the impact to our vehicles isn’t complete, and there is evidence that it could damage engines threaten performance, void warranties and confuse consumers- notably me. Didn’t matter, they issues the regulations anyway.

I do not want to trash the engine on my German run-about, which will be the last high performance car I own, so I am hyper alert to what is going in the tank. I don’t trust everyone to have things labeled properly, so check and see if one of these things is on the pump:

(Helpful label at the pump. Image DOT.)

I know why the EPA jammed this through- they want to use more corn or something, which is part of the complicated scheme to reduce foreign oil imports by using more corn, the production of which requires the import of foreign oil to agricultural states with early primary elections.

It is complicated, I know.

That’s why we have all those experts making new rules and regulations.

Speaking of agriculture and corn, I was surprised to hear The Department of Transportation has been busy, too. New regulations are being formulated that will mandate DOT ID numbers for all motorized farm equipment and that all users will have to obtain a commercial driver’s license.

Most of these vehicles never travel on public roads, but would mean that anyone who drives a tractor or operates any piece of motorized farming equipment would be required to pass the same tests and complete the same detailed forms and logs required of semi-tractor trailer drivers.

Any impact on family farms? Jeeze, Louise, what on earth are they thinking? It will impact as many as 800,000 Americans with additional paperwork and fees. I am glad I am not a small business these days.

Wait a minute. I might be one of them, like it or not, depending on what happens to the economy.

The last thing I heard out of the Hampton radio station was David Allen Coe warbling the perfect country western song: “I was drunk the day that Momma got out of prison….”

I punched “seek” on the dash of the police car and discovered that the centerpiece of the President’s Health Care program was declared unconstitutional by two out of three of the judges of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

I don’t know when my son migrated the pre-sets on the radio to C&W, but it was OK with me. It was sort of refreshing not to listen to the commentary on what has been going on the last few months, and just listen to songs about cowboy wannbees who cheat, are cheated on and are drinking to either remember or forget.

The court’s majority decision ran to three hundred pages, and apparently contained this gem, read gravely by the announcer on the Richmond NPR outlet:

”In sum, the individual mandate is breathtaking in its expansive scope. It regulates those who have not entered the health market at all… The government’s position amounts to an argument that the mere fact of an individual’s existence substantially affects interstate commerce, and therefore Congress may regulate them at every point in their lives. This theory affords no limiting principles in which to confine the Congress’s enumerated power.”

This by no means ends the matter, of course, which will continue the fun in our fractious system. I am confident that it will proceed apace to the Supremes, where the legacy of the Bush Administration’s appointments may result in another spectacular demonstration of the consequences of what the Framers devised in the implementation of the separation of powers.

Who knows; the Roberts Court leans right by a 5-4 whisker, and I expect that will be the ultimate legacy of the mad dash to ram the legislation through the Congress in the first chaotic months of the Administration.

Do you recall the “Cornhusker kickback,” the “Louisiana purchase” and the “Florida flim-flam?” They were all part of the grand deal that was orchestrated by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to secure the support of Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Ben Nelson (D-FL) and beat the GOP filibuster in the Senate.

Nebraska got a “permanent exemption from the state share of Medicaid,” worth about $45 million in the first decade of the program, not that it seems like much money these days. We have progressed so far on our drunken binge that you have to be impressed. Florida got a deal to grandfather Medicare Advantage enrollees in Florida, or about five billion bucks, which still doesn’t seem like much compared to what Mr. Bernanke has been throwing around.

The Louisiana deal was a piker in comparison, at only about two hundred million to the taxpayer.

It did cost more than Mr. Jefferson’s original Purchase, but never mind. Times are hard. Maybe we could sell it back.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
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