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

Saturday, April 16, 2005

LOOKING AHEAD TOWARD THE GOOD OLD DAYS

...the bankruptcy bill...

...the filibuster "nuclear option...

...interference in the Terri Schiavo episode...

...a frontal attack on Democrats and millions of people of faith on "Justice Sunday"...

...the Patriot Act...

...remember the good old days? OK, so you probably don't if you are less that about 30, but there were some good old days, trust me. Back in those good old days, a certain segment of the population began heading for the exits, buying weapons, ammunition, bags of edible food seed, water distillation units, multi-year supplies of prepared, storable food, and remote mountaintops on which to construct impregnable redoubts below which they labored mightily to clear out the underbrush to establish fields of fire. These folks, generally being of a conservative bent and not at all happy about the waves of liberalism sweeping the country, were convinced that a cultural meltdown was hard on their heels and wanted to get themselves and their families safely out of the way and up into the high remote areas where they could successfully survive the bloody collapse of the American way of life...

...if these people, who we generally referred to affectionately as "crazed wacko's", were able to look ahead to today, they would have been shocked to the point of dropping the clips of their semiautomatic rifles in the dirt at the way things have turned out. On the other hand, maybe it's our turn to fear the melt-down of society; maybe we should be getting ready now to hike up that mountain to those highly defended perches, perhaps waving cheerfully at and exchanging good-natured joking insults with those old-timers as they struggle down to reap the rewards of their current dominance. There is true irony that, as a back-chatter of armed conflict begins to creep in the national conversation, that it is in fact the conservatives that we have to thank for preserving our right to buy high-powered military-grade weaponry we'll need to effectively become the new survivalists. I just hope the newer versions of all those Meals, Ready to Eat and other survival rations I going to have to eat up there on that mountain are better than some of the examples that I've had in the past. Some of the old stuff would be enough to make a guy seriously reconsider his political affiliations...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:15 PM 0 comments

Friday, April 15, 2005

THE RETURN OF COMMON SENSE

...it was a truly odd story that came busting out of eastern Washington right at the turn of the New Year. Shawnna Hughes was simply waiting for the final court ratification of her divorce from her husband from whom she had been separated for over two years and who had been cooling his heels in jail for a good portion of that time over a conviction of spousal abuse. She was pregnant by the man that she intended to marry as soon as the ink on her divorce decree was dry enough to not smear too much. Problem is, her court documents didn't mentioned that pregnancy and, under the strict interpretation of state law by a superior court judge, that tidbit combined with - in his mind, at least - insufficient determination of the paternity of the unborn child was a flat show stopper, despite the twin facts that she had declared the father to be the man she intended to marry and that a general understanding of human biology would pretty much rule out her current husband as a party to her impregnation. In any event, he refused to grant the decree...

...this has served as another example of how the law is a truly marvelous thing to behold. Sometimes, as in cases like this, you can do more than stare in open-mouthed awe at the bizarre spectacle as it unfolds. No reasonable review of all the facts in this case, including the state law the judge was leaning on, could have allowed a person of average common sense to arrive at anything approaching a similar conclusion. His insistence that the child not be illegitimized by lack of an identified father had already been taken care of and yet, on that basis, he shut down the entire process. The cheapest half jacked meanstreet hustler in town wouldn't have given you odds on this actual outcome, but there it is...

...while it won't do Ms. Hughes much good, the Washington legislature moved with breathtaking alacrity (as legislatures go) and modified state law to allow pregnant women to divorce their husbands without interference by questions of paternity. Governor-For-the-Moment Christine Gregoire, whose election is still under challenge by Republicans who apparently lost that script they were all reading from during the 2000 Florida presidential recount, signed the bill immediately into law; it will go into effect in July. While Ms. Hughes' situation will presumably be settled by then, her case has done a huge service, serving as a catalyst to fix a problem that has undoubtedly affected other women but which didn't attract enough attention to make it onto the big radar screen. It's kind of nice to see common sense win a game every now and again...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:10 AM 0 comments

Thursday, April 14, 2005

A NEW TROJAN HORSE FOR WAL-MART

...over the last couple of months, the Wal-Martification of America has coming rolling across the winter-brown desert hills into Central Oregon, heralded with the long-rumored announcementthat Wal-Mart is seeking to open a Super Center on the north end of Bend. This has spurred the development of a group in opposition to that proposal and causing them to embark on a series of meetings and rallies to show their opposition and to stir the community. They are girding for what they no doubt see as a coming battle conducted across the comfortable, known terrain of local government, hoping to use whatever sway they can muster to convince local jurisdictions to reject Wal-Mart's application for a permit to build. This battle, on this landscape, will prove to be long and difficult, if past experiences are any guide. At that, they may be going about their quest in the wrong fashion anyway...

...included amonst the issues for which Wal-Mart is developing a reputation is it's corporate view of labor unions and unionizing efforts. Wal-Mart that WalMart had intentions of building a Super Center on the North side of Bend. Given that Wal-Mart has a reputation for employee pay, benefits, and relations that would be the envy of any third-world apparel manufacturer, this news was met with almost immediate resistence by a small but growing group of opponents. This small band, no doubt bouyed by the successful resistence mounted in several locations in California and Oregon to the advent of new Wal-Mart SuperCenters, began holding hates unions. It claims that it doesn't hate unions; in fact, it says that it really doesn't have much of any sort of thoughts about unions one way or another, but it's just kidding about that. Not only is the former head of US operations in trouble over possible misuse of corporate funds that he says were used esentially to spy on union organizers, but the company has shown remarkably little hesitation to pull plugs if unionizing gets to real. After Wal-Mart meat cutters in the Jacksonville, Texas, store voted to unionize, Wal-Mart eliminated all of its meat cutter jobs and went with prepackaged meat nation-wide. Although that by itself is a serious "whoa, dude!" moment, it's small potatoes; the Corporate headquarters announced that it's closing the entire friggin' store in Jonquiere, Quebec, after the store voted to unionize. These people are serious...which brings us back to the proposed Bend Super Center...

...long protracted battles in front of city and county planning councils have been a successful tactic in several instances for those not wishing to see a Super Center in their back yard, but they have been a beatdown at the same time because of the brutal expenditure of time and energy. The local opponents should shift their focus to curcumvent this nasty looming fight. They should band together and pre-unionize, establishing a large base of potential employees committed to the rights and responsibilities of unionized working conditions, then they should make sure that these pre-union members are not only the first in line but also the majority in line of all prospective job-seekers showing up to apply for positions with the new store. Widely publicize the fact; let it be known that a goodly number of those bodies milling around out there who are selected for Wal-Mart employment will be walking through the door that first day looking to have the union issue ratified sometime around the first morning coffee-break. Call it a Trojan Horse with a twist; this time the folks inside the castle will know they're coming, they just won't know who or how. This can save the suits at Wal-Mart all the effort and hassle of actually building the facility and then turning around a closing it. It's the perfect plan...

...sometimes ya just gotta think outside the box....
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:48 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

THE CONSEQUENCES OF CONSCIENCE

...crossposted at Ruminate This...

...one handy little primer that was provided to us by the whole Terri Schiavo debacle was the looming threat of potential consequences that reside in attempts by the outside world to muck around in what is usually referred to as the right to privacy. Aside from the gripping battle between her husband and parents, the legal battle attempting to force the will of people of so-called "conscience" demonstrated that, with the right convergence of circumstances, a person's fundamental natural right to be left alone could be snatched away in mid-blink by external agents more interested in fulfilling their own needs than those of the individual. Over at Pacific Views today, Natasha pulls the curtain back, allowing us inside for a powerful story that hits on three current important issues that relate directly to privacy rights and women's health issues: medical care, abortion, and access to prescription medicine. It's a story that neither I or any other man could presume to write from anything better than a second-hand perspective, and even at that there is no way to truly express a full comprehension of the emotions attendant to the fact of other people having a say over issues involving my living sentient body. Natasha, however, tells it superbly. Go read it now...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:20 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

THE NEW CONFEDERACY OF FOOLS

...it's almost like hitting the trifecta, except we don't - in the specific context - have that third-place finisher. Coming across the wire in first place we have John Bolton, a self-avowed opponent to the entire concept of the United Nations in the spirit of old-timey conservatives of the Jesse Helms school. Nothing that he has said or written in the last decade has given even the vague hope of any interest in seeking some sort of accommodation with an institution that has been in existence almost as long as he has been alive. He hasn't come quite as close as an Ann Coulter might to suggesting that death is the best choice for the humans who strive daily to make the UN work, but he has in the past mentioned that - in a variation of a famous lawyer joke - wiping out the top ten floors of the UN building would be a good start. What better choice to fling into the whirling maelstrom of international politics at the UN headquarters in New York as the new US Ambassador than...John Bolton! It's like a Guinness commercial gone wild. "We'll have one of the men most overcome by hatred of the international process become our ambassador to that process." "BRILLIANT!" Shockingly enough, strange alien beings have recently taken control of his body, so he is now speaking like some sort of George H. W. Bush internationalist instead of the isolationist "America First" jingoist we have all grown to love and appreciate. Yesterday's effort before the Senate Foreign Relations committee was the sort of star turn that you would normally expect from only the true wonderboys of the Republican party and not from an unreconstructed "bomb-'em-till-they-agree-with-us" supporter of the gay-biker-bar muscularity that we have come to recognize in the George W. Bush administration. Suddenly, today - under those hot Senate lights, a man who as recently as Sunday would have surprised nobody with the observation that the detonation of a healthy load of anfo-nitrate fertilizer at the base of an evacuated UN headquarters building would not be something that he could view as an unaltered tragedy was talking like the sort of fellow to which Dwight Eisenhower - or maybe Woodrow Wilson - might just feel comfortable turning America's international reputation over. But he is only Monday's story...

...today it gets even better. Today we get John Negroponte, stepping before a Senate committee in his confirmation hearing to assume the role of Director of National Intelligence. In his case, of course, the up-front issue is whether the Congress can trust that the Director of this new position will reliably tell the truth to Congress about his and his peoples' actions, plans, and motives. This John's difficulty lies in the fact that he appears, according to numerous rumors that seem to be somewhat verified by recently released documents, to be more than happy subverting the will of the US Congress and is something of a "bear any burden" operative, willing to sacrifice the lives of American citizens in the pursuit of some ill-defined higher good. More to the point, especially with regard to this particular administration, he has a history of supporting the overthrow of sovereign governments with whose mere existence we disagree. Newly released documents from the era of his turn as Ambassador to Honduras seem to suggest that the "breaking a few eggs for an omelet" concept was just fine with microphones when it came time to discuss basic issues revolving around the sovereign nature of national governments and our support of regimes with civil/human rights issues. Negroponte is almost a cherished icon of the bad old days of the Reagan era whence came to full flower the idea of support the bloody corrupt regime of any old tin horn half-baked mass murdering tyrant as long as it could serve as our piece in the ongoing world domination chess game we were engaged in with the Soviet Union...

...insofar as history is concerned, Negroponte's actions and lies back then don't really have a direct bearing on the position for which he is currently being interviewed, at least not in the same way that Bolton's long-time views about the UN prior to this apparent recent epiphany on his personal road to Damascus bear on his nomination. Negroponte's past provides handy clues, however, to understanding that there is at work here a philosophy that runs contrary to good order of a democratic society. He has shown a willingness to move around outside of the legally mandated will of Congress in order to achieve administration objectives that are themselves outside of the rule of law. This should certainly be food for thought for any Senator contemplating handing over the keys to the entire intelligence-gathering and -processing apparatus of the United States government, especially if that Senator has an eye down the road to some possible point in the future where she or he would like to get a straight, honest answer out of this guy. Today, of course, we will see a smooth compliant lap puppy displaying the same sort of transformation last witnessed in Bolton and trademarked by Mikey "Abu-man" Gonzales. That will be cover enough for the majority on the committee to move this nomination along, but it will leave the rest of us wondering just what sort of wild ride we're going to have in store this time...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:00 AM 0 comments

Sunday, April 10, 2005

A CALL TO ACTION

...these are serious times. Our man is in serious trouble; the jackals of the opposition and the hyenas of the press, not to mention those disgusting grub-mongering losers of his own party who should be standing tall at his side, are gathering around our wounded leader, hectoring him and waiting for the moment when he has grown so weak that they can move in for the easy kill. It's time for all good and faithful supporters to pull behind our man Tom Delay and buck him up, let him know that we're out there for him and pulling for him to have courage and fight back against these vicious forces that are trying to destroy him. We need to stand behind our man Tom in his hour of need...

...Our man Tom is truly important. He is the living breathing symbol of all that is rotten in politics and - more importantly - what is so twisted and corrupted about the hubris that has so quickly spread through the Republican party in their short tour as the majority party in the US. He is the poster child for everything that everyday people, not just juiced-up lefty bloggers but folks who've never heard of weblogs and don't watch "Meet The Press" but do have a secure knowledge of just exactly they don't want to see in their government, would cheerfully reject at their very first opportunity. He is a precious gift from a truly loving and just God to anyone hungry to take back the country from the wing-nuts and wack-jobs whose litany of callous craziness is commonly understood in all the knowing circles but growing far too long to be able to conveniently list anymore for anyone not paying attention. The next election cycle is a good starting place to introduce those facts to a larger audience, and Tom Delay is the perfect face to be on the screen. All this crazy talk, however, by people like Rep. Chris Shays puts that opportunity at risk. People like you and me may not seem like the most likely of supporters for Delay in this time of need, but it most certainly in our best interests to step forward boldly and give him all the support we can humanly muster, so that at the very least he can limp his failing influence along at least into the later stages of the next off-year campaign season next year. It's the least we can do for our man Tom to pay him back for all that he has done for us...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:24 PM 0 comments

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