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

Saturday, May 14, 2005

WINGNUT OUTINGS

...there isn't any more gripping personal tragedy than being found out. It has a depth and intensity that can leave long deep scars across the brainpan and make your name worth less than Monopoly money on even the seediest streets in town. Worst of all, nobody is there to offer a hand of sympathy or to just be with you as you ride out the storm. Most folks are laughing, either that or showing signs of revulsion. Such is the plight of poor Jim West, Mayor (for now) of Spokane, as his world falls apart and state and federal investigators line up around the corner for a shot at forking through all the personal elements of his life and his prospects shift from mere bone-deep humiliation and personal ruin to the real possibility of real hard time penned up with the sorts of folks for whom a law-and-order former sheriff's deputy/mayor suffering confusion over his sexual identity could represent an interesting diversion...

...West did speak out, sort of, in an e-mail the other day (oh, how I was wishing for my laptop and a modem over the last couple of days, but such was not to be) decrying the "brutal outing" he had suffered, presumably at the hands of the recipients and of the local newspaper. This had to be the laugh-out-loud moment for West's opponents, especially those who are familiar with his long, vicious record toward gays, especially that bill calling for firing some gay state employees if they were found out. This most certainly not a "brutal" incident; tarring and feathering and chasing him through the Spokane streets at the business end of a charged-up cattle prod would be brutal. This was just business as usual in a setting where caught-out hyprocasy is the one true sin and the short term temporal wages of sin are personal ruin and banishment; just another day at the office, sport....

...an interesting side story that has cropped up is the appearance of what can only be characterized as the loony element of society. The representative of a group opposed to gay rights claims that a recently passed city domestic partnership ordinance paves the way for just this sort of behavior:

"We hope that the Spokane City Council will now realize that endorsing homosexuality through domestic-partner benefits gives social approval to the very behavior that has led to public and private shame from Mr. West's actions," said Penny Lancaster of Community Impact Spokane.

...apparently, following this logic, the acceptance of heterosexual domestic partners gives social approval for me to start consorting with some of those doe-eyed, lithe, ripe young high school girls from around the community. Somehow, strongly-worded recommendations to the contrary from Mrs. Jack K. aside, I tend to suspect that that's not the case. This is just a wingnut outing of another meaning, and it would be amusing were it not for the disturbing realization that these sorts of people are actually running loose among us and are finding outlets for their mindless drivel. Your man got turned and burned, Penny, and no perfectly illogical statement will either make it go away or help his supporters to find anything like a silver lining. He is accused of committing crimes, and they would be crimes regardless of the gender of his victims and targets. There might be a point to be made had he been photographed in a gay bar having too much fun; nobody in society gave him approval to do the things he's accused of doing. This is...in fact, these are... just two twisted versions of wingnut outings resulting from a naughty boy being found out...
Posted by: Jack K. / 4:46 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

THE LYING OREGON RELIGIOUS RIGHT

...I've never voted for Ben Westlund for Oregon state senator. It's nothing personal; he seems like a personable and nice man, but there is a long list of subjects over which we disagree...

That may change.

...after the passage of Measure 36, a constitutional amendment establishing marriage as the union between one man and one woman, the focus of people interested in securing secular legal partnership rights for same-sex couples turned to civil unions. The various conservative religious groups fronting for Measure 36 made it clear in their daily conversations during the campaign, such as the Oregon Family Council, that this was about the sacred act of marriage as a union before God and not about some other civil non-religious relationship. Honorable men and women, including Ben Westlund, decided that the passage of the Measure and a subsequent State Supreme Court ruling invalidating 3000 Multnomah County same-sex marriages that ignited the whole fight to begin with was a signal to introduce civil union legislation in the state legislature. As his reward, Westlund is being bombarded by phone calls and his constituents with post cards from that same Oregon Family Council decrying his support for civil unions, which now are characterized by the OFC as the same thing as marriage. A local Bend religious radio station, KNLR-FM (who will soon be receiving an inquiry as to the expiration date of it's broadcast license so that planning can begin for the challenge of its renewal, but we'll let that be our little secret, just you and me; nobody else needs to know) has even gotten into the act, calling on listeners to notify Westlund of their disapproval of his sponsorship of the bill (it's so cute when they lose track of their FCC-mandated responsibility to serve the community's "interest, convenience and necessity"; if you don't believe me, call them with an advertising request for Gay Pride Day to help them balance out their editorial behavior). They have also made sure to rile up the Deschutes County Republican leadership, which apparently wants to have some sort of "Star Chamber" meeting with Westlund to discuss his straying from the fold. The argument in this case is that his Republican constituents votes strongly for Measure 36 and therefore would be opposed to civil unions, even though the backers of 36 were careful - you just can't say this enough - to draw a distinction between same-sex marriage and civil unions...

...so they lied. It wasn't about the sacrament of marriage; it was about whether gays and lesbians could have legal rights as couples; that has become manifestly obvious even though it wasn't the song they were singing last fall. This is why I always...ALWAYS...refer to these people as 'religious' rather than 'Christian'; they lie. They routinely lie and cross the bright line on any particular handul of the rest of the Seven Deadly Sins on a regular basis, frequently before lunchtime, and do it solely for the purpose of gaining power and advantage in society. They have totally lost their way with respect to Christ's teachings in order to compete with Caesar over that which is his, sacrificing any thought to that which should be given to God. It appears that the whole Measure 36 game never was "just about marriage" as they insisted when it was necessary to get the votes, but instead was about invading the secular multireligious muticultureal society to force their particular will on the entire population. They may not be able to bring you to their particular narrow spiteful iteration of God, but by God they will force you to follow his will even if they can't convincingly point to any particular way in which your different views pose a particular personal threat to them or their celebration of their faith...

...like I said, I have never voted for Ben Westlund and, under normal circumstances, I doubt I ever would if what passes for a Democratic organization in Republican-dominated Central Oregon offered a reasonable candidate. This deceitful, un-Christian effort to establish a fundamentalist theocracy in Oregon may change all that, however. I may just change my registration to Republican so I can be availble to support Westlund in case those limp-wristed fops of the Deschutes Republican Party decide to run a religious rightist candidate against him, and lots of other Central Oregon folks should consider doing the same thing. It's been a long, long time since I voted for a Republican, but Westlund is trying to do the right thing and - for that - I would be more that happy to support him, at least in the primary, for that effort. As far as the general election is concerned...well, we still need to talk about some things...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:37 PM 0 comments
LIGHT IN THE WRONG DARK CORNERS

...apparently it's time to reveal that long- and closely-held secret that special teams of handlers and fixers have kept out of the news for years. No, I am not talking about Gee Dub's National Guard years; I'm referring to those innocent youthful days when he and Michael Jackson used to have their sleep-over's, the same sort of activity that has captured the fascination of an American public and thrust McCauley Culkin uncomfortably back onto the national stage. Maybe during an intense cable news program discussion of the frolicsome antics of a youthful Gee Dub, Michael, and other young friends (what the heck, let's throw in John Bolton just to be topical), it could be discussed that young George revealed to Michael and the other boys the contents of a top secret British memo discussing the intense Bush desire to overthrow Saddam Hussein some months before he actually broached that subject to the American people. That discussion could take place, not because it recounts some actual true moment (because it obviously doesn't; I mean, c'mon, this is Michael Jackson we're talking about here. He has standards!), but rather because it might serve as the only meaningful way that the existence of that memo could be inserted into the larger American conscience...

...as I was reading excerpts of the memo over at the Poor Man (to whom I extend profound thanks for the link to the memo article), I began to feel some of that old annoyance building behind the eyebrows. As a nation, we will leap from the Lazy-Boy and bound across the coffee table, spilling the pop-corn bowl and scaring the pets, in order to turn the channel so as not to miss the most recent installment of the Jackson trial or today's tidbits on the Runaway Bride (I have children; I have no idea where the TV remote is) but couldn't - even after hours of dedicated scouring of the airwaves - find a single mention of a memo that, assuming it isn't some simple little hoax, purports to show that the Bush Administration intended to overthrow the Hussein regime months before the first drumbeats of 'weapons of mass destruction' and 'al Qaida links' and 'mushroom clouds over America's cities' began tumbling in a fetid jumble from the lips of leaders of our own regime. The memo stands as its own perverse smoking gun found at the scene of a crime against truth; it deserves its own airing before the American people. It's not as though the election settled this issue; we didn't knowingly engage in a referendum last year over whether we were ok with having been lied to in support of a "preemptive" invasion (which isn't so terribly preemptive if your motives are for reasons other than trying to preempt something). It may well be that folks may just take a bit of offense at that sort of action, given that they are starting to come to a clearer understanding of how poorly this whole "flower of Democracy in the Middle East" thing was planned and executed by the executive branch. The years-long actions of Bill Clinton's own personal independent counsel, not to mention the Iran-Contra hearings that muddied up the last years of the Reagan presidency, have clearly demonstrated that these sorts of issues can be pursued back across the boundaries separating terms in office. If this sort of thing had transpired during the Clinton administration, it would have hit Number 1 with a bullet on every 15-minute news cycle on TV for days, complete with dramatic first-person paid accounts from New Orleans hookers about how the Big Dog had confided these very facts as he was....well, never mind about that. But we're not talking about Clinton with his facile apology routine, or even the Teflon-slick Reagan, but instead Gee Dub, who seems to have replaced Ronnie's no-stick coating with a thick, mucusy sort of envelopement that swallows up and buries those potentially damaging news-pellets so they just...disappear. There is no discussion on the national stage about how he got away with a fast one, because there isn't any particular understanding that there was in fact a fast one to be gotten away with...

...even though there apparently was...

...all the talk about inspectors and divestiture of WMD and UN timetables was simply rhetorical exercise intended to buy time for preparation of the inevitable outcome. Saddam could have personally escorted every drop, dram, and kilo of WMD material in his possession (assuming he actually had any) to the nearest seaport and loaded it all onto American freighters himself, maybe even throwing in several large pallets of those fancy steamer trunks full of $100 bills as a goodwill gesture, and he still would have been just as invaded, just as overthrown, and just as in custody in that famously undisclosed location. That's what it was all about, and it had nothing to do with potential threats, international law, or the tenets of just war. That's what the memo is telling us. Instead, and in the meantime, we continue to hang on every detail of some former child actor's sleeping arrangements at Michael Jackson's crib. It's just like you're using a flashlight looking for something in a poorly lit room and you keep shining the damned thing in the wrong dark corner, finding all sorts of interesting stuff but never seeing that one important thing. Somewhere, today, Edward R. Murrow is sitting with his head in his hands, muttering sadly and darkly to himself...
Posted by: Jack K. / 12:13 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

A NEW MARTYR FOR THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT

...I suspect that...

...no, it's more than that; I fear that we have not heard the last of the name Chan Chandler. He is recently the good Reverend of the East Waynesville Baptist Church who aledgedly threw nine members out of the congregation for unrepentent support for John Kerry and tonight, at a congregational meeting, resigned from his post. Aside from probably heralding the breakup of the congregation, he has skillfully crafted a future for himself as another 'person of faith' driven persecuted across this bleak Godless landscape of ours by the forces of the liberal press and leftists who refuse to allow 'people of faith' to worship - much less stand up for that in which they believe...

...a clue about how things are going to go down for the congretation at East Waynesville:

“The only thing I wanna say is that everything that’s been in the press is a lie,” said (a supporter). “I have never bowed down to Chan. I’ve only bowed down to the Lord.”

Asked if she would remain a member of East Waynesville, she said, “I’m not going to serve with the ungodly.”

...yup, I'm confident that nothing like the excommunication of liberal members happened...it couldn't be clearer than that...

...we will hear his name again, if not from him directly. This is the sort of episode that can easily be twisted into just the sort of example of what the religious right has been. The opportunity is too promising to pass up. The pastor chased from his church by the liberal forces of evil is going to be the next poster child for the Dobson's and Robertson's out there. I can just feel it...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:51 PM 0 comments

Monday, May 09, 2005

THE REAL MAJORITY

...it's a simple math exercise, if one really wants to engage in it. First, you go get a list of the population by state of the United States. Then you grab hold of a list of the current list of United States Senators. Disregarding those states where the US Senatorial duo is represented by both a Democrat and a Republican (such as Oregon), you then identify which states have solely Republican Republican representation in the Senate and which states have solely Democratic Senators. You then add the populations of the states by party for these states (21 Republican, 15 Democrat for those playing at home). What you discover is that roughly 53% of the citizens of the United States are represented by Democratic Senators (the fair method of splitting the populations of states with both Democrats and Republican Senators add equally to each total and are therefore, in this math exercise, discounted, although this gives a small amount of short shrift to Vermont's Jim Jeffords). THIS is what the filibuster debate in the US Senate is all about...

...there has been all sorts of chatter during the course of this debate over some of Gee Dub's more ridiculously right-wing appeals court nominees. They tend to perch like fat dumb birds in two particular trees: The President has his right to an up or down vote; and the expressed majority of the Republican party in the congressional and executive branches somehow grants that party the right to exert their will on all of us simple losers on the other side. There is a simple hole in these arguments; it's not a complex hole and it doesn't take lots of erudite lofty words to describe it. The President, by his electoral victory, is accorded the right to make nominations. He is not accorded a right to have an up or down vote on any of those nominations; the Republican party, for all their other obvious and obscene faults, taught us this hard lesson in their brutal handling of judicial nominations over the second half of the Clinton Administration. Because of the twisted nature of presidential campaigns, 2004 was never anything like a referendum over the past or future judicial nominees that he might gin up to pay honor to his party's wackjob base. What the filibuster has always represented is the right of the "minority" to stand up against the potential abuse of power by a Senate majority. In this case, that majority is a chimera, a ghost with no meaningful substance. Gee Dub's 53% isn't the same thing as the 53% of Americans represented by Democrats; the Democratic representation is far more important because of its greater focus on locality issues (we won't even mess here with the vote-fraud conspiracy issues). The bottom line is easy: the Democrats are not a minority; they represent a cross-section of the American population, living in every region of the country, who don't buy the overall message of the Republican party and who should be able to reserve the right through their elected representatives to have a meaningful say - as opposed to some bizarre up-down party line vote - about who will be sitting in important seats of government power for the rest of their natural lives. If anybody has a problem with this exercise of fundamental American rights, then maybe they should devote their wingnut energies to a constitutional amendment moving the confirmation process to the House of Representatives. As long as it stays in the Senate, where the "one man/one vot" concept has never had any meaning, the rights of a majority represented by a minority through the exercise of the filibuster process must naturally remain in place...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:51 PM 0 comments

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