Richard Gephardt seems to have a little trouble understanding what an executive order can and cannot do, saying, “”When I’m president, we’ll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day.” So, to be helpful to any potential future president such as Dick Gephardt, here is a quick guide to the powers of presidential executive orders:
Executive orders CAN be used to enforce a Supreme Court decision.
Executive orders CANNOT strike down a Supreme Court decision.
Executive orders CAN order the bombing of a target.
Executive orders CANNOT alter the flow of time.
Executive orders CAN dispatch the military.
Executive orders CANNOT override the word of God.
Executive orders CAN be used to create new offices to execute the laws.
Executive orders CANNOT control the weather.
Executive orders CAN give someone a paper cut.
Executive orders CANNOT place a voodoo curse on someone.
Executive orders CAN be made into a paper airplane.
Executive orders CANNOT be folded more than seven times (try it).
Executive orders CAN be turned over and used as scratch paper.
Executive orders CANNOT make yourself bulletproof.
Executive orders CAN be rolled up and used as a pretend telescope.
Executive orders CANNOT be rolled up to use as a weapon to defeat Aquaman.
Executive orders CAN be used to wrap a fish.
Executive orders CANNOT be shredded up and used as a replacement for oregano.
Executive orders CAN be suitable for framing.
Executive orders CANNOT grant super-powers.
Executive orders CAN beat rock.
Executive orders CANNOT beat scissors.
I hope this was helpful to Gephardt and will make him more accurate in his future demagogic speeches.
“Executive orders CAN be rolled up and used as a pretend telescope.
Executive orders CANNOT be rolled up to use as a weapon to defeat Aquaman.”
Are you sure? I mean, this is Aquaman we’re talking about.
If executive orders can be used to create new offices to execute the laws, could one create a new office to execute a voodoo curse?
How to defeat Aquaman with executive order.
#1. Order Buck the Marine to kill Aquaman (He’s from Atlantis, a foreigner)
#2. Use EO to give Aquaman a paper cut. Aquaman swims in the oceans. Salt water + paper cut. He’ll be begging for mercy.
Once around the ‘sphere, cabbie
Tiger says: I will stop as soon as someone devises an inpatient program where they keep you doped up for years until you have absolutely no more craving for nicotine. I am eager to trade my nicotine addition for an…
I think this whole brouhaha is based on a misquote. Poor Il Dick.
What he really said is:
“When I’m president, we’ll execute orderlies to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day,” Gephardt said.
I hope this clears things up.
Once around the ‘sphere, cabbie
Tiger says: I will stop as soon as someone devises an inpatient program where they keep you doped up for years until you have absolutely no more craving for nicotine. I am eager to trade my nicotine addition for an…
“Executive orders CANNOT be folded more than seven times (try it).” I did try it. You’re right. However, to be more concise, you should have said, “CANNOT be folded in half more than…” Just trying to help.
Naw, Lil’ Dick is beyond help.
MonkeyPants
Imperial Falconer
FC Monkey Pants,
“Naw, Lil’ Dick is beyond help.”
But, but…his Daddy was a UNION member!
Ooops, that unsigned post was me… I think I’m still upset at Lilek’s wife being canned. Maybe we could get her a job in Frank’s White House?
I’m thinking if we elected Baron Samedi as president, an exectutive order could be used for a voodoo curse.
“Executive orders CANNOT be shredded up and used as a replacement for oregano.”
You SURE about that? I believe it’s a little known fact that in the Johnson administration, it was common practice to shred EO’s from Nixon’s White House and use them for exactly that purpose…..
Here’s my Aquaman concern: executive orders cannot be used to defeat Aquaman, but the very next one says that they can be used to wrap fish. So why not use the executive order to wrap any fish and fish-like substances Aquaman sends your way? It’s not like he can do anything else, so at the worst, you’ve got a draw. There’s also the papercut part. But I’m sure there is some logic that I, not wearing a Nuke the Moon t-shirt, am missing.
You mean the Lloyd Johnson administration that won’t take office until 2016, which is the only Johnson administration that will come after the Nixon administration?
You’ve blown your cover! Now everyone knows you’ve come backwards in time to make a killing on the yet-untapped saltwater market by hoarding saltwater for desalination and sale after the great freshwater wars!
Husband. Shhhhhhhhhh. 🙂
hln
I thought Andrew Jackson used an executive order to strike down a Supreme Court decision about re-location of Indians from Georgia to Oklahoma.
That was a bit different. He just didn’t enforce their order.
You can fold an executive order more than 7 times, provided that the order is on 11″ x 17″ paper. Damn big order I know, but still….
Geoff K, no y’can’t. I’m a printer and I’ve tried it. Matter o’fact I just tried it again. Can’t be done. (and I was using newsprint)
btw, I’ve also tried it with 23″ x 37″ 16#. Still can’t do it!
Actually, a single piece of paper cannot be folded more than 9 times. It’s a physical impossibility, no matter how large the sheet.
Ryan, yer mistaken. It is 7. If you can provide video/photographic evidence of folding a single sheet an 8th time you will have done what no one else could do! SHOW ME!!!!!
coupla links
Frank explains the concept of executive orders to Dick Gephardt. PSA: Men, when cheating on your wife with a friend…
Hey, here’s a link about someone that says it can be done up tp 12 twelve times. ..
http://www.osb.net/Pomona/12times.htm
A Primer for Mr. Gephardt
Being a career politician is tough. All that bottom-feeding, baby-schmoozing, interest-massaging, hand-pumping fundraising work must take a real toll on a body. I am sure their brains feel like they are leakig out of their ears sometimes, especially wh…
A Primer for Mr. Gephardt
Being a career politician is tough. All that bottom-feeding, baby-schmoozing, interest-massaging, hand-pumping fundraising work must take a real toll on a body. I am sure their brains feel like they are leakig out of their ears sometimes, especially wh…
A Primer for Mr. Gephardt
Being a career politician is tough. All that bottom-feeding, baby-schmoozing, interest-massaging, hand-pumping fundraising work must take a real toll on a body. I am sure their brains feel like they are leakig out of their ears sometimes, especially wh…
Your order sir?
Frank J lets Gephardt know what he can do with executive orders. Can’t you just hear the teenager in him? I love this stuff….
Scott, went to the link. Fascinating, this high schooler, Britney Gallivan, may have done it.
Her equation for the limit on how many times a certain piece of paper can be folding lengthwise (end over end in one direction) is
L = ((pi x t) / 6) x ((2^n +4)(2^n -1)).
“L” is the minimum length required to make the number of folds “n”, and “t” is the thickness of the paper.
(incidentally: the equation puts no limit on how many times a peice of paper can be folded in half, only that it requires a certain length of a certain thickness to be folded a given number of times.)
There’s a photo of Brittany holding down a specimen that she claims has been folded 11 times. Not knowing how tall she is I’ll guess that the thing is about 18″ long and 6″ thick.
The number of layers of paper sheets, from bottom to top after 11 folds, would be 2,048 (fold it once it’s 2 sheets thick, twice and it’s 4, third time and it’s 8, etc etc).
Being only 6″ high means that the paper she used (judging from my 17 years in the printing biz) is about 25% thinner than ordinary 20# copier paper…about 14 or 15# (somewhat akin to “tracing paper”).
If each layer of paper were 18″ long than the strip she began with would have been 36,864″ — or .58 miles — long. But a lot of paper will be need to actually make the turn; about 0″ on the first fold and about 5″ on the last, for an average of 2.5″ per layer on the last fold, meaning 1.25″ per layer on the 10th fold, which means 0.078135″ per layer per fold divided by 2. That’s another 880.11264″. That almost exactly cancels out the length “missing” from the inner folds (trust me, I just did the math on my trusty calculator!).
So lets crunch those numbers into her equation:
First we’ll do the (2^n +4)(2^n-1) part. We know n=11, so 2^n +4 = 4,100, and 2^n -1 = 4,095. Multiplying them we get 16,789,500.
Now for (Pi x t) /6; t (for 14# paper) = about 1/300″. I could multiply that by 3.14 and divide by 6, but since Pi is so close to three I’m just gonna go ahead and resolve it at 1/600″.
So, we got L = 1/600″ x 16,789,500.
L= 27,982.5″ or, .44 miles.
That’s pretty darn close to the .58 miles I got from observing the photo. Also, look at the fold by her left knee: it’s about 3″ thick, which would agree with 14-15# paper.
The girl may be onto something. I no longer weap for the future.
nor weep neither
btw; while I guesstimate the length of the strip at .58 miles, the equation says she only needed .44 miles. So she had room to spare, but not much. In order to make that 12th fold — according to the equation — the strip of paper would have to be about 4x as long, about 1.766 miles.
Yeah, this is what I do on Friday nights. My life sucks…
Man, all that math gobbldeygook, and I though I was impressive trying to get drunk people to fold a piece of paper in half eight times !
( and I even tried a sheet of newspaper seeing as it was big and thin…no go.. I still believe the Man, all that math gobbldeygook, and I though I was impressive trying to get drunk people to fold a piece of paper in half eight times !
( and I even tried a sheet of newspaper seeing as it was big and thin…no go.. I still believe the <8 thing the Sporkmeister so masterfully illustrates ( hey, if I spelled ‘illustrates’ right, isn’t that a printing joke? )
ps- Tuning Spork ( I love that name, I actually get it..) was the ‘Sporkmeister’ name OK with you?
After all, from what someone told me, ‘meister’ is German for ‘master of’
Paul,
Being addicted to KFC side dishes I have, in fact, become quite a master of the spork. I can finish a tub of cole slaw without dropping a single shard!
I’m still an apprentice at using chop sticks, though.
Executive orders CANNOT make yourself bulletproof.
even if you stack all of Clinton’s EO’s on top of each other? thought that’d be more resistant to guns then Nato.
Hi,
I am the one who folded paper in half 12 times and derived the folding limit equations. Members of the skeptic society verified the folding. The picture shows only 11 folds but it was easily folded over to make the 12th fold. http://www.osb.net/Pomona/12times.htm Tuning Spork did a good job with the math and making sure the estimates were in line with the reality of equations. He was correct is saying it was 6 inches thick in the photo. I was able to finally find a roll of paper that was 0.76 miles long. I had a little more paper than needed. I knew this would be able to be fold it in half the needed 12 times though I had only folded paper in half 9 times before.
The limits in the equation are absolute limits, assuming that paper can be slid around etc. For various reasons it will require more paper in reality. It is significant that the loss limit increases almost to the fourth power while the thickness just goes up as the second power. In the book I also list a theoretical limit for folding in two directions. The paper was about 0.0033 inches thick. And you are right on all the estimates for the folding. I do also mention bookbinders creep as being related to the problem.
To fold a piece of normal thickness paper in half 16 times, folding in both directions, would take a square piece of paper with sides of over a mile.
Britney,
You’re awesome! And also a peach for posting here!
May I have a complimentary copy of the book? 😉
Oh, and have you come up with an equation that describes folding a square sheet of paper in alternate directions? A much harder challenge, I know, but even more rewarding, I suspect, if you can meet it!! This is your mission; you must accept it!