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Checks and balances

By Owen Paine on Thursday May 26, 2011 11:00 AM

Today's time square sentinel makes careful note: "members of Congress" are muttering about "violations" by Emperor O'Barry of nothing less than the 1973 "war powers act"!

Ahh, the war powers act...the war powers act... slowly I turn... step by step.... What a fucking noodle rod of chastisement that has been all these years, eh?

I suspect almost anyone of my Woodstockian generation recalls the feckless spasm of representative gubmint that produced it, way back there during the oh so horrific Nixonian miasma. But dare I say the memory comes only with a certain wistful chortle?

What a notion, now: the war powers act, unleashed from the stone like the Golem, to crush Barry in its embrace. What a contemplation that is, eh, comrades?

Stillborn wouldn't be too unfair a description -- stillborn and then pickled in a milk bottle and left under Frank Church's desk in the senate. Such has been the utterly lifeless history of this mocked bit of midnight-hour playacting by our nation's legislature.

A noble attempt to override Uncle's overreach? Perhaps failed, but nonetheless magnificant in its aspiration?

Hell, no. The damn thing is only noble and magnificent in its cynical contrived impotence. It's just another witch-doctor brandishment, like that perpetually waved shrunken head, the nuclear option.

From day one of its enactment till this morning's bomb runs over Col Q's camel tent that solemn act of Congress has been mocked and traduced at every turn. The damn thing has been shit on like a park monument. There's been act-defying "armed interventions" by every, yes every, single succeeding POTifex maximus.

The whole business is just bitterly, laughably farcical.

Any mention of the war powers act deserves the purest form of Curly Howard's dukes-flying rampage. It's so infamous, so infuriating, so enervating, that merely at the mention, well we all oughta....

Alas, my sputter fails me here in mid-motion. Come on, Paine, why bother to saw the air like old Lear? Isn't it far far better each of us simply subsides into one of those satori acts of pitch black sarcasm? Haven't we had enough indignation over the failures of Congress for ten lifetimes? It is we who are the fools, to get ants in the pants here... no?

If we keep this rallying up, it's us pwog croakers and lefticulated earthworms that are the hopeless dupes, not the juke-box players at the Nueva York "Kabuki Times" -- 'tis we that are the mutual face-slapping stooges.

What are we shaking our fists at, if not each other? And we do it at every senseless galvanic twitch of this dead third appendage of gubmint, this hunk of ham trailing along after the mighty death star of the... republic.

Comments (7)

Wow, Paine. The Wet Noodle Of Chastisement. What a concept. Kinda reminds me of Frank Zappa's Chrome-Plated Megaphone Of Destiny.

But, seriously, folks...

I can remember when the War Powers Act was passed; I was down with it in principle, but the whole time I was thinking well, shit, man; aren't El Presidente's war-making powers limited by the Constitution? Doesn't he have to ask Congress for a formal declaration of war? Didn't Vietnam happen because Congress blew off that responsibility?

Looking back, I can't help sneering at these doorknobs threatening to invoke the War Powers Act because a: you know they won't have the cajones to actually act on their threats, and b: it's basically an admission of their guilt in not demanding that El Presidente adhere to the Constitution by going to Congress for a formal declaration of war. Nowadays, I recognize that Congress passing the War Powers Act was pretty much the same as passing legislation requiring a balanced budget: formally declaring war and balancing the budget are part of their goddamn' job description, f'cripesake.

Christopher M:

Put a fucking crown on the Prez's head and get it over with.

I'm all for the crown, as well. Let's have the job description match the symbolism.

Put a crown on whoever you like, but when the crown's men start looking around for new cannon fodder keep your sons out of sight.

the Drunk Pundit sez on 05.26.11 @23:24:
Put a crown on whoever you like, but when the crown's men start looking around for new cannon fodder keep your sons out of sight.

...and lock up your daughters, too; don't forget, they've come a long way, baby.

MJS:

Puts me in mind of the Blackadder theme song --

The sound of hoofbeats cross the glade,
Good folk, lock up your son and daughter,
Beware the deadly flashing blade,
Unless, you want to end up shorter,

Black Adder!
Black Adder!
He rides a pitch-black steed,
Black Adder!
Black Adder!
He's very bad indeed,

Black, his gloves of finest mole,
Black, his codpiece made of metal,
His horse is blacker than his vole,
His pot is blacker than his kettle,

Black Adder!
Black Adder!
With many a cunning plan,
Black Adder!
Black Adder!
You horrid little man!

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