So Congress failed to "defund" the Libya thing after all. And there are no war crimes trials being done on President Obama for skirting the "War Powers" Act. All the huff and puff and smoke about the Constitution has faded away. And life goes on as we know it. All the "greatly concerned," "important" and overwrought comments and articles by serious American patriots worried about the erosion of constitutional law in this land (that they only just thought of now, decades after Grenada) ended up being the usual partisan bullshit once again.
And so much for the bluster and indignation of serious-minded people who want to save America from this dangerous black guy in the White House. The GOP has once again manipulated their base on an issue, then walked away from the issue, leaving a steaming pile on shit on the President, which was their only goal anyway, but no real resolution to their manufactured indignation. I don't know what pisses me off more, that normally intelligent, reasonable people continue to allow themselves to be manipulated by country club Republicans, or that the Democrats have no fight in them. The Dems remind me of the old phrase we used to use in the drug days - "he can see the cars, he just can't get out of their way."
Now we've moved on to the debt limit.
In this act the GOP will take their position all the way down to the wire, vehemently demanding no tax adjustments whatsoever and a cut in Social Security and Medicare, until the midnight hour when the the deal both sides have already made will go into motion and the debt ceiling will be raised without any real alteration in anything we can think of off the top of our heads, and the whole thing will not only be forgotten but no one will be able to say what they actually did about it. Then it'll be "it wasn't all we wanted but we have to take little steps to get where we're going."
The truth is that if the debt ceiling isn't raised and the USA defaults on its paper the world economy will smash into a million little pieces and if you think it is bad now you ain't seen nothin' yet. Anyway that's the argument President Reagan used when he wanted the ceiling lifted, and nobody said a whisper about the budget deficits he racked up. They still don't.
But there are political points to make and more steaming piles of shit to leave on President Obama's doorstep that he'll just step over on the way to the next act because he's presumably too dumb to recognize what's going on - OR he's already in "I'm the adult in room" mode (which is what will get him re-elected). And no doubt we'll have to listen to the same "concerned" and "important" commentators - amateur and professional alike - about whatever the hell the next terribly significant issue is that will ruin the country, the Constitution, motherhood, God and baseball.
Or we'll just toss out another tweeting Congressman proud of his balls or something. That always acts as a kind of analgesic. Doesn't really deal with the pain, just makes you forget you have it.
In the meantime there's drug tests for people before they get that awesomely huge welfare check, the campaign to keep GAWD in the Pledge of Allegiance, and all the other bullshit commonly associated with Wal-Mart America's campaign to make this the single most prosaic, irritating, provincial, reactionary, knee-jerk, peckerwood haven, anti-intellectual shit hole of a country you and Abe Lincoln ever saw.
Happy Fourth of July. For duty and humanity... or whatever...
