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

Saturday, March 19, 2005

THEY CALL IT ASKING FOR TROUBLE, SPIKE

...Roberto Emerick, one of the jurors in the Robert Blake trial who participated in the acquital of Blake over charges of killing his wife, is somewhat torqued up over the hate mail he has been receiving over his unsolicited promotion of an album on his appearance on "Larry King Live" shortly after the verdict was announced. Emerick is upset that others are upset over his mentioning of a commercial activity associated with the trial, given that he used his music as a "stress management technique" during the course of the trial. In the part of the greater Pacific Northwest where I grew up, this is what is known as "not having a clue"...

...what Roberto doesn't seem to 'get' is that most folks stuck with jury duty, whether it be in some moderately high-profile case like this one or a run-of-the-mill local trial, tend to do their civic duty and then go home. Even in cases that may result in their appearance on some sort of regional or national media outlet, most folks don't take time out to pursue free advertising for their songs or poems or paintings or diaries that are a direct byproduct of the civic burden that they just finished carrying. Not one musical compact disc came out of the O.J. Simpson murder trial, for example, nor has a single line of poetry emerged from the Scott Peterson trial. Roberto's self-promotion at the end of this trial seems stupid and cheap and totally out of context to the issue at hand. Roberto deserves all the hate mail that the U.S. Postal Service can stuff into his mail box. Maybe, after having to deal with it, Roberto will 'get' it with regard to American civic duty...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:32 PM 0 comments

Thursday, March 17, 2005

MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON - 2005

...it's almost a "Nixon goes to China" kind of moment. Oregon's Republican Senator Gordon Smith, who has apparently successful completed his ephemeral makeover to appear to be a "moderate" Republican, has taken a stand like some latter-day Jimmy Stewart against the intellectually corrupt forces of big government in an effort to strike a blow for the little guy. Yesterday he introduced a budget amendment that would roll back the entire $14 billion cut in Medicaid being pushed by the Bush administration and Republican congressional leaders. His effort, buoyed by bipartisan support that offers some hope for passage, is important news for the Oregon Health plan and its continued viability...

...this amendment, along with his recent vote against drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) have caused great strides to be taken in Smith's efforts to be styled as a moderate. It was a makeover that he pursued when he first ran for the US Senate in an effort to be more attractive to a state-wide voter base and break out of his previously well-established Eastern Oregon conservative image. That newly crafted image slipped dangerously off its mooring pins during a Senate vote targeted to eviscerate Oregon's Death With Dignity act, when an emotional Smith voted his conscious over the twice-expressed desires of his constituents. Apparently he's getting back on his game. Surprising as it may be to detractors like me, Smith is actually supporting his constituents in the face of the desires of the political masters in Washington. Unlike his Republican House confederate Greg Walden, Oregon's only Republican House member, who is cheerfully going along with snatching Medicaid benefits away from his less well off and elderly constituents (of which Greg Walden has a great many) while at the same time supporting another 100 MILLION DOLLAR tax cut, Smith is actually acting in Congress to represent the needs of the voters who sent him to Congress to speak for Oregon and not for the leadership of the Republican party...

...this departure from the party line will no doubt irk leadership figures, the White House, and anti-government guru's like Grover Norquist, but it can't help but boost his stock with a lot of Oregon voters. His is not a name one necessarily connects with the cadre of so-called "moderate" Senators such as Chaffee or Snow, and his actions haven't elevated him to the level of a Hatfield or Packwood in terms of Republican moderation in my mind, but at least in this instance he's looking out for the little people rather than currying favor with the bosses in search of better committee assignments somewhere down the road. It hasn't changed my mind on who I'm going to be looking at voting for next time he comes up for election, but - still - I have to take my hat off to him over this maneuver...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:22 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

MAILING IT IN ON VOTE BY MAIL

...the Washington state House yesterday approved a bill that would allow vote by mail to become the balloting method of choice statewide. This, of course, is the method of voting we here in Oregon have been using in one form or another since 1981, although it didn't become the standard state-wide voting method until 1998. Aside from the increased turnout that Oregon has experienced, the experience itself is something that can really spoil a fella, especially in a ballot measure state like this one where any ring-necked coot with some personal axe to grind can get an initiative on the ballot. The last thing I want to do is stand in one of those cheesy little voting booths with the sounds of impatient shuffling feet just beyond the drapery while I slog my way through 20 or more stupid picky-assed little measures aimed at getting some advantage for some special interest group (Jack's First Rule of Voting Efficiency: vote NO on any measure that is a Constitutional Amendment). It's a waaay better deal to be sitting at the kitchen table with a beer and a ballot, perusing the voter's pamphlet to study the issues and candidates, swearing at the brute venal stupidity of some ugly power-grabbing skank and the edge-seeking measure he or she has managed to burrow onto the ballot. Enough Washingtonian's have already figured this out to make the use of absentee ballots a significant portion of the regular turnout...

...not that there aren't detractors, of course. Republican party officials are usually generally opposed to the vote-by-mail practice, and this effort is no different. Chris Vance, Republican Party Chairman, raises the usual case about the increased potential for fraud, even though they virtually invented the practice of facilitating the distribution of absentee ballots amongst their voters, which results in the very act of voting by mail to which they are so opposed. The far greater likelihood is that they are more concerned about voter registration numbers than they are fraud, seeing the convenient provision of ballots to every registered voter as a built-in advantage for the more numerous Democrats. The red herring in this case is an embarrassingly obvious one; Vance dismissively notes that "You never check anybody's identification" in a vote-by-mail scenario, apparently forgetting to add that this isn't required at Washington polling places, no doubt because that bit of info would do some harm to his objection. In fact, when I was a resident of Washington, I was never asked for identification beyond my voter registration card at a polling place, so it's probably time to put that one to rest...

...it's simple; it saves money on polling places, which long ago in more populated settings lost that sense of community that certain opponents will keep pining for until somebody beats some sense into 'em with a Norman Rockwell painting in a good sturdy frame. It obviates the whole provisional ballot mess and it eliminates the need to request an absentee ballot, which should be a burden lifted from those who already use that method and...who knows...may free up all sorts of Republican party resources to direct into other areas like push-polling and baseless attack adds. So, come, Washington; join us. It's easy; it's painless. You will be free...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:31 AM 0 comments

Monday, March 14, 2005

THE NEXT GAY MARRIAGE SHOT IS FIRED

...by now, although I haven't had a chance to cruise all my favorite sites, I'm assuming that the whole wide world has begun to comment on the decision by a California Superior Court judge that California's law banning same-sex marriages had no rational basis in the California Constitution. On my way home from work this evening, I was listening to Oregon same-sex marriage activists expressing a certain somewhat repressed joy at the decision, even though the voters fairly handily passed a state constitutional amendment last November plugging this particular piece of disparate treatment into the Oregon Constitution. This is another in a series of local judicial decisions across the country that have stated that simple laws banning same-sex marriage violate "separate but equal" prohibitions that exist in most state constitutions...

...this issue stands to become the most culturally divisive subject in the land. Today's decision serves a useful purpose because it will force the California Supreme Court to finally address the issue, which they dodged during the lawsuit against the San Francisco marriage riot of about a year ago. Regardless of one's views on the basic subject of whether same-sex couples can enter into the fully established estate of "marriage", freighted as that word is with all sorts of cultural and religious meaning, the depressing fact is that this will become - for the next little while, at least - the cultural battle of the early 21st century. The problem, as I have said before, is in the word itself. "Marriage" is a thing that has more than one meaning. On the one hand, it is a state-licensed function that establishes the parameters of legal rights and responsibilities of the two partners 'in sickness and in health'. Without regard to gender or religious beliefs, 'marriage' establishes property rights and child custodial rights and a host of other parameters of coupled living. On the other hand, in the realm of the Judeo-Christian ethic, marriage is a sacred contract between two people entered into before God and establishing a set of rights and responsibilities outside of the legal rights and obligations overseen by State requirements. To put it quite simply, there is no hope of reconciliation between pro- and anti-gay marriage folks at this second level. Unlike the issues involved in formerly banned interracial marriages, there will never be any room for support of same-sex marriage in what we will call for short-hand purposes the religious community...

...discussions of the social pro's and con's are a low-rent side show; the big action on the center stage is the secular vs. Christian (particularly conservative Christian) battle over the use of the meaning and symbolism of the word 'marriage'. As one who lives in the Christian community, I suspect that there will never - or at least "never" in any humanly understood sense - be any sort of common ground that can be found over the use of the word. This is the perfectly intractable conflict, one that will unleash the emotional power of each side in the debate which will only add to the negative energy powering this conflict. There will be the inevitable ballot measures creating a constitutional ban against same-sex marriages in California and Washington; passage in either case is uncertain, but the heat and verbal violence of the debate is certain. This isn't a recipe for a good time, but the tide is coming in fast on this issue, so it ought to be a wild ride....
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:08 PM 0 comments

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