The Rubicon Again?

We cross here, so head for the water, boys, greaves[1] off an' who's got the dice?

...It seems to me that "Rubicon crossing" has become a regular feature. The last big one was the Congressional shirking of declaring war on Iraq, mostly so later they could say, "Nuuuh-unh, it wasn't us, it was those meanies in the Executive Branch," and who gave a darn if it wasn't the way the Federal Gummit was supposed to work as long as they got some wiggle room? Constitution? A meaningless piece of paper from men too male, too white and altogether dead, a thing to be cast aside by a simple vote.

Now comes Friday's Great Pork Festival, in which a bill that was wayyyyy too bloated for the House earlier has come back, crammed to the bursting point with goodies, a camel stuffed with a goat stuffed with a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a hen and the whole thing stuffed right up our tax bill, dry and sideways. Oh, yum: the biggest bit of meddling since the National Recovery Administration opened shop and Garret Garet opened up his typewriter to fire salvos at it. Yessir, Mr. Garet, that Revolution Within The Form you saw is well more than half-baked now![2]

Conversely, a good many of the House members -- and I use the term with deliberate punning malice -- are as half-baked as ever. Struttin' an' preenin' afore the cameras all afternoon, as though they'd personally solved the problem forever, instead of en masse and badly for about, oh, I give it half a year, 12 months at the outside.

Congress. Rope. Big damn scaffold on the Capitol steps: some assembly required.

I don't know how much it would help, besides perhaps the hemp and jute industries. There are plenty more where they came from, most with no grasp of where the value of money is created or who Adam Smith was. Or even the sense to pour sand out of a boot, for all that many of them graduated law school. Or do I repeat myself?[3] But they look all shiny an' sincere; they smile and hand out candy, telling us we'll march into the future shoulder-to-shoulder under their benevolent guidance (except for the fat cats and/or lazy or otherwise unlikable. You gotta have a Those People, just wait and see -- and sooner or later, it's me or thee).

Yeah, you betcha. United in chum(p)ship. Then it's shearing time and a lucky few get picked to be mutton stew!
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1. Yes, this is another word Blogger's spellcheck is plain stunned to find is a part of English as she is writ. Jeepers, what did they feed it with, the smallest dictionary they could find? ("Typing is hard," says keypunch Barbie). Shin armor, blast you for a hunk of impure code running on less-pure silicon and shiny metals.

2. His novel The Driver is available online; some (and by that phrase I mean "Justin Raimondo") see foreshadowing of Atlas Shrugged in it but me, I'm intrigued by a book written in 1921 or '22 with a chapter titled "The Funk Idol" and that includes the phrase "PEACE ON EARTH: GOOD WILL TO MEN BUT DEATH TO INTEREST BEARING BONDS" in the opening paragraphs. (Also? Block caps are a PITA). Garet has a nice ear for the language and I dl'ed a copy.

3. Many years ago, I expressed my wonderment at this freak of Nature to one of the several competent attorneys whose paths I have crossed. He pointed out that even a lawyer of only moderate talent has a pretty good thing going, a steady income at least, and only an unskilled or overly-ambituous one would look to make a career of elective office. Interestin' notion -- not that I would be endorsin' it myself, mind you, not in light of the litigous nature of modern American culture; 'tis just a thing I heard a man say, once upon a while.