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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Friday, January 21, 2005

THE NEW NAPALM GIRL

...there's a famous picture from the Vietnam War. I'll bet you've seen it. It's a picture of a young girl running, naked and in obvious terror, toward the camera and away from her village that had just been napalmed. It was a haunting photo that seized the public imagination in the United States and probably did more to affect American sensibilities about that conflict than any of the killing and dying and destruction that those of us of a certain age saw on the network news night after night. It was a jarring image that brought home the human cost of war and played its part in shifting the tide of American opinion about that conflict...

...I've been looking at a photo published at various sources for a couple of days now. The story behind the photo is straightforward in its portrayal of American troops trapped in circumstances that force them to make split-second decisions based solely on their experience and what they see at the moment, lacking the precious luxury of time that might afford the opportunity to sort out the details and maybe choose a different course of action. The tragic outcome of that lacking luxury is two dead parents (Turkomen - ethnic Turks - to boot) and a back seat full of hysterical terrorized new orphans. It's not an uncommon story; we've seen other similar versions in the news more times that I would ever care to remember. The difference this time is that picture...


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...it is by turns haunting and dauntingly disturbing. It spurs my protective parental instincts, goading the urge to pick just the right weapon out of the gun cabinet and lay down fire against those that brought this desperate innocent child to this state. That passes quickly, however, because I know that the perps in this case were soldiers who, for all they knew, could be looking down the barrel at a suicide car bomber intent on taking out an entire patrol with one well-placed detonation. All arm-chair quarterbacking aside, if it's me in those desert camo's walking down that darkening street, knowing that there were people out there with cars and explosives and a previously demonstrated burning desire to kill me, I would be shooting, too, if the car didn't stop. Insufficient information, too little time, a hunger to live, and an assault rifle will put a person in that place. The most refined emotional point I can finally get to is the desire to pick up a suitably sturdy piece of firewood out of the wood shed and go off in search of whoever the hell it was that so completely hashed this grand nation-building adventure that young Americans were even put into the position of having to make these brutally desperate split-second decisions in the first place...

...but, still, there remains this little girl. More than any photo that I've seen out of this Iraqi conflict, she most completely captures the true underlying brutality of this administration's decision to use the violence of war to it's own end. Hunkered down in abject terror, spattered in her family's blood, she is the Iraq war's equal partner to the little Vietnamese napalm girl...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:29 PM 0 comments

Thursday, January 20, 2005

MANY THANKS

...during a casual scan of Technorati, I discovered that several bloggers out there, some of whom linked to Ruminate This, have linked to this little effort of mine also. I will confess that it was an unexpected but wonderful surprise to discover this, so I would like to take this opportunity to extend my profound and and heartfelt thanks to Avedon Carol at the Sideshow, Madeline Begun Kane at both Mad Kane and President Boxer (the latter of which I haven't yet - but will - add to the rolls), Bryan at Why Now? (whom I also need to add), North Carolina journalist Lex Alexander at Blog On The Run (who is supposedly a "reasonable" conservative, but with whom I find myself agreeing with far too often for the comfort of one of us), and - closer to home, just a quick half hour drive north on deadly Highway 97 in Bend, Oregon - Jake Ortman at Utterly Boring and Jon at Chugnutt (the definition for what that means is in the header), neither of which I have properly reciprocated. Thank you for your kindness, and if there is anyone that I have missed because Technorati hasn't identified you, my most humble thanks and apologies...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:54 PM 0 comments
LOCAL GIRL HITS THE BIG TIME

...I first encountered her nine or ten years ago. I was serving as a course worker during the annual sled-dog races in the small, perennially snowy southcentral Oregon town of Chemult, stationed at a particular corner of the course a few miles out in the woods...just me, my snowmobile, and that looming gloomy surrounding forest full of large fur-bearing carnivores that hadn't had a decent large mammal meal in months. Racing had wrapped up for the day, but a few of us course workers were asked to hold position because a young girl was running a team on our portion of the course; the course marshall radioed that we needed to make sure she cleared each of our positions because she was...well...blind. I sat there listening for the calls of the course workers up-track as she passed them while my mind went racing down its own trail of apprehension: missed corners, runaway dogs, dog fights (it's not always one big happy family in a dogsled team), or half a dozen other higly improbable but statistically possible occurrences that could leave us looking for a little blind girl in the rapidly gathering evening darkness. Finally, through the incredible stillness that only a winter forest can offer, I made out faint rustling and jingling harness noises and, just before the team popped into view, the unified panting of a small dog pack. The team, with a surprisingly little girl clinging fiercely to the back of the sled barking out commands in dogsled-speak, passed by at a trot (it's always amusing how most of the dogs from the second row back are the ones that give you a good once-over as they pass by, as if celebrating the welcome visual respite from an uninterrupted view of dog butt) and I, after radioing that they had passed my position and giving them a bit of a head start so the sound of my snowmobile wouldn't disturb them, puttered off down the trail back toward the start/finish line. That was my first encounter with Rachael Scdoris...

...over the next couple of years as I did my volunteer work at the Chemult races, I would see her and other family members - especially her dad - jingling past whatever little piece of frozen winter panorama I had been assigned for the day. There was never conversation; we were usually out pre-riding the course before most of the mushers had showed up at the marshalling area in the morning, in the evening I was anxious to just get my snowmobile back to its shed and gassed up so I could go home , and while engaged in coursework we strictly operated under those traditional parental dicta of being seen and not heard and not speaking unless being spoken to. As the years have gone by one could occasionally catch the name Scdoris in the Bend, Oregon, newspaper in the very occasional sled dog story, and then last year Rachael Scdoris began to receive more press coverage as she wrangled with the officials of the epic Iditarod race for permission to enter the event teamed with another competitor as a visual aid assistant. Agreement was finally reached and she will be entering the famed grueling adventure this year...

...it's an amazing story, really, about this local Central Oregon girl who is headed toward the big time to compete in the biggest event in her chosen field. If you had been standing there with me out in the woods a decade ago trying to tell me that that determined-looking little girl that just went skidding by behind a brace of tongue-lolling sled dogs was going to be in the Iditarod in a couple of years, I would have instantly begun to treat you with all the due deference that I would accord any stone-cold crazy person with whom I was stuck in the woods...at least until I could get out of arm's reach...

...but there it is. It's a remarkable story of a remarkable young woman's effort to achieve her goal, one that I frequently recount to my children, especially during conversations about just exactly what constitutes a clean bedroom. Now if I could just get them to work on their goal-setting....
Posted by: Jack K. / 1:12 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

FOUR MORE YEARS...

...and, so, tomorrow it begins - or ends, as the case may be. Somewhere between 9:00 and 10:00, Pacific Standard Time, the reality of a second George W. Bush presidential term will bear its final rotten fruit, and we will embark on the long grim trail of ‘four more years’. It will be a time of celebration for the insiders: the rich, the corporate leaders, the faux-Christian far right with their own odd desire for a new American theocracy based on their own self-serving interpretation of the Scriptures. For those of us who fell into the wrong column of last November’s electoral balance sheet, it will be either a time of defiance for the protest-oriented or a time of pure simple avoidance for those of us with less energy. The media will do its best to invite me into this celebration of our democratic process, filling the airwaves with opportunities for me to listen in from my muddy perch here on the melting, unseasonably warm east hip of the Oregon Cascades, but I have the tools to avoid it with the same ease that a casual sporting fan might ignore a useless Super Bowl matchup....

...even without having to visit attention on the inauguration, tomorrow is still a beginning for everyone who had their money on the Democratic horse. Tomorrow represents the first mile to be traveled on the long road “back”. It is, admittedly, a familiar road for progressives, the same well-worn pavement that had to be covered in 2000, and covered again in 2002. The wreckage at the end of those journeys are sadly familiar mile-markers along this road, and the smoldering hulk remaining from 2004, while perhaps a bit smaller, still bears testament to the same sad story of failure for the Democratic party. Now the trip needs to be different, though; as a fully and truly minority party, it is time for the Democrats to reach down within themselves to find the means to reestablish a voice that speaks to people’s true concerns. They have been taken down by a gang of hucksters and mechanics who operate more from a sense of style than of substance, the manifestation of which can be seen today when Gee Dub and his minions insist that the narrowest margin of victory for an incumbent President in the history of the Republic was somehow a sweeping mandate for a host of foreign and domestic initiatives that weren’t even discussed during the campaign. Thirty seven years ago, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson wrote of the ‘68 Nixon campaign that they operated from a cynical core that confidently believed that political success was based on shrewd technique rather than the quality of the product. The eerie similarities between Nixon and Bush the younger, particularly the manner in which they manage their administrations and campaigns, is too obvious to, at the very least, take note of, if not ponder at depth...but I’m too tired for that now...

...it was inconceivable to anyone on the left that Bush could win in 2000...but, of course, he didn’t really, after all...and there is little likelihood that he would have been more than a one-term flash in the pan were it not for his personal God’s gift of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. This created an opportunity to appear tough and drape the “war President” mantle over his own shoulders, providing him and his Bush Monkeys chance after chance to prey on the natural fears of people who in the main had nothing to fear by casting out terror alerts like lightning bolts to stir up the populace whenever the common-ness and raw anti-commonfolk partisanship of his Administration threatened to take over the daily public conversation. This remarkably articulate use of public fear opened the door for a preemptive invasion of convenience in Iraq that would otherwise not have been tolerated by the American people and was geared more toward implementation of decade-old PNAC theories of the application of American hegemony as a stabilizing factor in the Middle East than toward any effort to make America safer in a dangerous terrorist-filled world, despite all the wasted oxygen expended in public salesmanship. Yet, even with all these built-in advantages coupled with a press that was willing to stand placidly aside while abandoning it’s traditional fourth estate function and - among other notable things - allow a bunch of political hacks and hatchetmen trash John Kerry’s military service with well-documented and easily provable lies, Gee Dub was barely able to pull of a victory of less than three percent. It is admittedly painful to acknowledge that a fella that came too small to the office had to rely on political tricks built on the nearly three thousand metaphorical gravestones of the 9/11 dead and a litany of misrepresentations about an ongoing war of choice to scratch out a victory that he otherwise wouldn’t have had a prayer of winning, but there it is, and that story is done...

...so now we look at “four more years” of an unfettered Gee Dub, surrounded with yes-puppies like Alberto Gonzalez and Condi Rice, components of his own human house of mirrors that will wave their cheerleader pom-poms at the entrance to any path he cares to wander down. So many of these paths are at least partially - if not definitively - to the detriment of the plain ol’ folk in this country. If they are smart enough, the Democrats have the opportunity to do the things that various pundits have been chatting up since Nov. 2: taking the positive effects of liberal influences on American lives and moving them from a bumper-sticker reality to an actual message that can be taken to the nation. The more refined and detailed of those cheesy color-coded “red/blue” maps reveal that the bulk of the nation really is living on that 50/50 purple knife edge; other reliable surveys indicate that “traditional family values” (the code word for pressing conservative Pharisee issues like abortion and gay marriage and such) didn’t play all that important a role in individual voter decisions. It’s been said before, but - what the hell - piling on is a cheap and easy sport, so why deny ones own self: the Democratic party needs to start the journey now, from the county level to the national stage, delivering the message that traditional progressive values are the values of the American people. The right to be allowed to aspire to one’s best is progressive; the right to be left alone by the government is progressive; the right to be allowed to worship or not worship the deity of your choice is progressive; the right to live in safety and security is a progressive value. There’s more, but I’ll leave it to the big-timers on the inside to hash it all out. From the outside, the quickest thing to say is that it’s time, as the reinstallation of the least substantial President of my half-century-long lifetime looms mere hours away, to cowboy up and get back out there to fight the fight. It’s not going to be easy (although it could be some fun, in a twisted way), but I feel like I owe it to my children to try...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:40 PM 0 comments
SPREADING THE WORD

...there is no crisis in Social Security...

...courtesy of Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest...
Posted by: Jack K. / 1:25 PM 0 comments
LOOKING FOR POLITICAL COVER

...curious comments by House Ways and Means chairman Bill Thomas of California. Long story short, he says that Gee Dub's roughed-out plan for Social Security "reform" is a dead horse, in large part because it won't be able to attract Democratic support. This hits the ear oddly because the manner in which the Administration has offered up this "reform" was as typically divisive as any other initiative they've served up, seemingly geared as much to score political points at the Democrats' expense as to actually present any sort of honest policy initiative. Republicans are in control of all the gears and levers of government, at least nominally, so it would seem unnecessary for any of them to be pulling a brake handle because of the need to get Democratic support for any changes in the Social Security system...

...except, of course, for the fact that some members of Congress probably have a better feel for the political balance on this issue than does the White House, especially as far as their personal electoral prospects are concerned. Thomas' concern is that the unnecessarily confrontational manner in which the Bush Monkeys have been rolling out their proposed reform has, aside from alienating Democrats completely, has robbed Republicans of cover to the extent that many of them would be forced to vote it down. The political algebra is relatively simple: the...er...more mature citizens who feel that their Social Security annuities may be put at risk vote in historically larger margins than do the younger workers who would have the most to gain with private investment accounts. Without Democratic votes to provide some political cover, many Republicans can probably imagine without even closing their eyes the constant hammering of "let the old folks eat cat food" spots that an upcoming Democratic challenger would be whipsawing them with during the next election cycle...

...in one context this represents the fraying of the Republican coalition and its grip on power. Congresspersons don't have to look forward to havin' Gee Dub's back in an upcoming election; their own electoral success is their primary concern. That is the solvent that melts the joints holding together monolithic control of the operations of government...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:55 AM 0 comments

Monday, January 17, 2005

THE ORYGUN LEGISLATURE TAKES THE LEAD AGAIN

...in its last legislative session, the Oregon Legislature turned with its reknowned laser-like attention to one of the most vexing problems plaguing the state. Reforming school finance to avoid contributing to another week-long Doonesbury series, you might ask? Nope. Reinforcing the Death with Dignity Act to further buttress it against Bush Administration challenges? Not a chance. Maybe medical marijuana or the trail-breaking Oregon Health Plan? Get serious. Passing legislation making the act of being a player on the Portland Trailblazers a felony offense just to get the inevitable charges out of the way right up front? Probably not a bad idea, mind you, but that wasn't it either. Nope, the pressing issue that the honorable Mr. and Ms. legislators grappled with was how to better manage the speed limits in school zones....

...this isn't to say that the subject didn't need dealing with. Many school zones, especially in rural areas, had speed limits requiring reduced speed "when children are present". Ever since I moved to Oregon a couple of decades ago I wondered just what the hell that meant. I can understand during the school day and a certain period of time before and after that time, but what about a Saturday afternoon where you just happen to sight a child walking along the sidewalk within the school zone; does that qualify? In my current town, the school zone extends to a major through-street that is a block removed from the school area; does the presence of children at the school invoke the school zone speed limit even though you may not be able to actually see any children as you drive down this street? The Legislative solution was simple: if the normal speed limit is 30 mph or less, the school-zone speed limit is 20 mph all the time ; if the normal speed was 35 mph or above, the school zone speed period would be dictated by flashing lights or an established time frame or some such thing. The result of this law in my large amorphous community that - even though it has 10,000 residents - has steadfastly fought off the evils of incorporation was that this aforementioned main travel route, separated as it was by a block from the actual school, was assigned a 24-hour 20 mph speed limit. The same thing happened in communities all over the state, with drivers discovering that they were suddenly legally required to pass in a stately and relaxed fashion though a speed zone intended to protect children even though it may be 5:30 in the morning or 11:00 on a Wednesday night and the likelihood of any foot-bound elementary school students being in the vicinity of that particular elementary school represented a probability that the most sophisticated scientific instruments may have trouble measuring...

...although it wasn't visible at the political press level, this became a significant issue in state-level campaigns. Accusations of speed traps and just plain old common sense objections to the idea of having to prowl through a school zone at reduced speed in the middle of the night, violating that traditional Oregon sense of personal responsibility, caught the attention of those competing for state legislative positions. The subject didn't crop up so much as a campaigning tool but certainly was flagged as a simple solution gone awry that needed to be fixed...and By God, fix it they will. As some sort of major "what does it all mean" issue, this particular item doesn't make the cut, even though it may well be the first (and perhaps only) issue that the Oregon Legislature will deal with in a bipartisan fashion. It is instructive, however, as a lesson about how the process can work when the little people let it be known that they don't give a diddly-hoot how this gets fixed, just fix it. It is interesting that, in my little Central Oregon part of the world, an unofficial fix - totally in violation of the new law - was implemented with no muss, fuss, or bother. The particular stretch of road in question includes along its length the main intersection to the local school complex, the intersection to the library and the local Boys and Girls Club as well as to a kid's dance studio (all of which parents generally drive their kids to and from), the entrance to a Department of Agriculture facility, and the entrances to a major hardware store,a carpet store, the local Post Office, a strip mall containing a day-care and several small businesses, as well as a driveway entrance to the local Bi-Mart store. Implementation of the all-day 20 mph speed limit created an absolute nightmare for traffic in this little piece of heaven. After only a few days, the sign segment specifying the school zone speed "at all times" disappeared, reverting the school zone speed limit to the old "when children are present" standard, and has stayed gone for the last four months. Don't know why it happened and nobody's talking...but at least I no longer have to worry when I drive through at 6 a.m. that I'm going to have to take time out of my morning commute to chat with a Sheriff's deputy...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:23 PM 0 comments

Sunday, January 16, 2005

INMATES RUNNING THE ASYLUM

...we learned last year that the Bush administration had precious little moral compunction about sidestepping federal laws prohibiting propaganda when it came to pushing for its Medicare drug plan. They intentionally created what looked for all the world like news reports that - in themselves - gave no hint that they were created as a policy position of the federal government and tended to present a somewhat less that wholely truthful account of the issues. The Government Accounting Office clearly established that federal law had been violated in this effort, despite the lame protestations of Administration officials. We have also learned this weekend that the Social Security Administration has been developing a plan to echo Gee Dub's twisted lies about the viability of the retirement payment program and to tout the private investment plan that lies at the core of the Republican's effort to finally once and for all kill the whole concept of Social Security annuity payments for retirees. This not only violates federal laws regarding advocacy not authorized by Congress, but also violates federal laws regarding lobbying by Federal officials, since it represents an effort to influence a Congressional vote on a matter of public policy...

...the snotty-nosed rhetorical question would obviously be "so, how have those criminal trials been going, eh?" Even though the GAO, generally accorded the right to be the expert on matters of Federal Government operations, was explicitly clear on the violations committed in the release of those lame Medicare drug plan "news reports" last spring, there has not been a single Congressional hearing investigating the issue (to build on the theme, think Clinton would have gotten away with this?). It should probably even be more disturbing that the media didn't rise up in a huge white angry wall of opposition against the Bush Monkeys for even attempting to subvert the pure delivery of news (Rathergate aside) for their own rancid little political purposes, but that's a different and often-rehashed issue on it's own that the so-called fourth estate needs to work out on its own...

...while the increasing inability of the main stream media to defend itself from both the efforts of the Bush Monkeys to make it a simple tool and from the legitimate charges that it is coming dangerously close to abandoning it's traditional role of protecting the public interest by shining a bright revelatory light into the dark roachy corners of government operations, there is an even greater small-d democratic concern over the abandonment by the Congress of its oversight role in the use of federal funds. The GAO made it's call on the drug plan ads; in an otherwise perfect world (Dr. Pangloss, Candide, Voltaire) there should have been at least the stirrings of an investigation to determine whether the charges lodged by the government's designated green eye-shade folks bore merit. A deep hollow echoing silence was the response; this is not the stuff of which strong republican democracies are made...

...it is the hallmark of this administration, it's footprint on history, as it were, that the use of media - at whatever cost - for the advancement of a particular agenda is so deeply welded into the core of it's philosophy. This gang in charge is built on a deeply dug foundation of raw cynicism that is so thick and pervasive that they don't even work up much of a sweat any more even trying to disguise it. Simply laying out the storyline of the day and trusting to a lack of perspicacity on the part of a media machine that so fears lack of access or charges of liberal partisanship that it willingly hacked off its own roots to the bold investigative "damn the torpedoes" journalism of the Watergate era that fired up so many of my contemporaries (and, confessionally, myself, until I changed my college major to a natural resources management field) is usually good enough for these minions. They have established a style that is uniquely raw and brutal, spinning their self-serving lies about Iraq, Social Security trust funds, Medicare drug programs, environmental initiatives, education reform, and a whole list of other issues even knowing that the confounding truth is out there, knowing that a cowed media will allow that truth to be pounded down by the cacophony of advocacy "journalism" and that a compliant Congress thrilled to almost drooling obsequience by the thought of total nominal power of government has their back totally and won't lift a finger to challenge their behavior. As a result, violations of federal law involving Armstrong Williams or the Department of Health and Human Services or the Social Security Administration will go unchallenged. As shown in this story, the subversion of the press to the aims of this gang of waterheads and thugs is becoming more widespread as time goes by...

...the inmates have taken over the asylum and, on a dark cold night on the advent of the week that will end with the reinfestation of this bunch into the left-hand seat in government's cockpit, it can't help but stir up heavy dark thoughts of a grim future. The sun seems to have gone south for the winter and taken any sense of hope or promise with it; the near future portends a thick oppressive darkness so visceral that it almost has a taste to it. We are saddled with an administration that will use its skills at media control to foist off any old damned thing they want to on the public, and we only know that there is neither a legislative branch or an independent media either ready or willing to make them accountable to the American people. It's an old, uncomfortable feeling from my early adulthood that I hoped I would never experience again; it is the feeling that swept like an unwelcomed rain squall over the left side of the political fulcrum in late January of 1973 as Richard Nixon prepared to stroll out of the Capitol building onto that slammed-together bunting-draped scaffolding over the front steps to take his second oath of office. That particular incident was the beginning terminus of a wild ride that did as much to restore a true democracy to this country as any number of musket volleys ever have. One can only hope that somehow, somewhere, some entity will step into this particular crease in history and rein in this careening busload of zealots and restore the true concepts of balance of powers represented by the three branches of government and an independent watchful press. Sometimes hope is your only refuge...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:54 PM 0 comments

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