<$BlogRSDURL$>

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

Friday, June 10, 2005

TRUTH PEEKING OUT FROM UNDER A BLANKET OF LIES

...as far as anyone in the Bush administration is concerned, everything is going along just swimmingly in Iraq. In event after pronouncement after speech, a warm comforting blanket is wrapped around the American people, embroidered with stirring tales of rebuilt schools, reconstructed infrastucture, and reconstituted government. There is a differing, discordant view of the Iraqi reality, however, and even though it doesn't seem to get a deserving amount of press or attention, it does tend to peek out from underneath that blanket every now and again. This is a classic example; Newsweek's bureau chief, having originally been an unabashed supporter of the invasion, has apparently had his "road to Damascas" moment somewhere in the last two years (or maybe not; maybe it is just the accumulation of grim stories and ugly scenes) and now can barely crank up a faint desperate hope that maybe, just maybe, despite all the evidene to the contrary, things may work out alright. This is only the most recent in a number of stories that have crept out from under the blanket over time, offered by journalists, aid workers, and soldiers...

...but now there is a new, "in their own words" article from the Washington Post that peers deeply into the guts of this machine, down at the platoon level where the interaction between American troops and the Iraqis they are training has to work if that country's police and military forces are ever to grow sufficiently strong and competent to relieve us of our garrison responsibility. It is simply a beating. They hate us and we think they're cowards; from such ingredients a successful cake is seldom baked. The remarkable thing is, this is the situation that the Army - never one to let slip a view of it's dirty laundry - actually sent the reporters into for their story, suggesting any one of three things: 1) the Army people on the ground have grown numb to their own problems; 2) the Army media handlers have bought the administration line and don't realize just exactly how bad things are; or 3) somebody in government-issue desert camo has lost faith with the mission and is sending up signal flares to the American people. This is almost beside the point, however, because what really matters is that things aren't going at all well and even a casual study of human nature would suggest that things will likely get worse rather than get better...

...war supporters, which still number in the millions, get all squinty-eyed and testy at the mere hint of a suggestion of parallels to Viet Nam, but the evidence provided by articles like this one make the comparison hard to ignore. A battlefield without lines situated in the hostile environment of a far-off land populated by citizens of varying and shifting allegiences and protected by an indigeneous military force that sometimes lacks the will to fight and served by a government grappling with internal strife that hampers its ability to function properly, all of this coupled back home with an Army that can't recruit sufficient volunteer troop strength and a population that is seeming to lose faith with the effort. Nope, no parallels there. The mounting evidence that everything about this Iraqi incursion was based on a blanket of lies makes these occasional glimpses of truth from underneath that blanket even more important, if only so we won't be taken by surprise if Gee Dub's nation-buildin' democracy-bringin' adventure collapses in on itself...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:45 AM 0 comments

Thursday, June 09, 2005

IS THERE A THEME HERE?

...my Lordy, some days there are so many different issues nipping and snapping at various body parts that a fella can't tell straight away which one he should focus on first. It's kind of like when the neighbor's house blew up a couple of years ago and the conundrum was whether to rush to see if there were survivors in need of rescue somewhere under the shattered remnants of their meth lab, try to stop the spreading flames from getting into the crowns of the surrounding pine trees and starting a good old fashioned forest fire upwind of my house, or throw the kids and a few important items into the car and get them out of harm's way. It almost feels like that today...

...first we find that Jesse Helm is writing a book. Apparently in this book he is going to share his thoughts of his prominent life, including some sort of back-handed acknowledgement that he was wrong for the intransigent opposition he presented for years to efforts to address the growing AIDS problem in this country. At the same time, he is supposedly going to stick to he guns on integration, insisting that it would have eventually occurred as some sort of organic event without the interference of the Federal government. How it is he feels this way given a few thousand years of human experience that generally stands in stark contrast to such theories of people gathering in a multiracial circle in the town square and singing "If I Had a Hammer" frankly escapes me, and it would probably be solidly worth hundreds of words to spew sarcastic invective at his bizarre observations, but that would take time...

...and I am otherwise distracted, anyway, by this interesting little note, which reveals that House Ethics Committee Chairman Doc Hastings of the Emerald State of Washington, the man who would be leading any investigation into the encyclopedic array of lapses, shortcomings, and failures that darken Tom Delay's ethical life is himself all mobbed up. In the last decade Hastings and his staff appear to have had extensive dealings with Jack Abramoff in his role as lobbyist for the government of the Northern Mariana Islands; Hastings has said and done things that just so happened to be in the interests of Abramoff and the Northern Mariana's, and through the most amazing, unbelievable, virtually incalculable but nevertheless actual set of circumstances, money from Abramoff, his lobbying firm, and that company's employees have found their way into Doc's campaign accounts. All of the principles insist that the amounts are peanuts, hardly worth mentioning and certainly not enough to turn the pretty head of an Honorable Member of Congress. That's alright; the Northern Mariana's are small islands. On the other hand, this does raise concerns in enquiring minds as to the vigor that might be directed at the Honorable Mr. Delay's issues, but there almost isn't the time available to dissect "what it all means" in any depth...

...and the reason there isn't is because my attention is almost immediately whipsawed off in the direction of the Federal tobacco lawsuit and some of the seamy little backstories starting to spill out from the back of the machine that may have bearing on why the hell the Government decided - out of the blue - to lower its claim against the defendant from the $130 million recommended by its own expert to a certainly more manageable $10 million. Oh, yeah, and the government lawyers also asked expert witnesses to throttle back on the harshness a bit, dude, on their previous sworn testimony; you know, cut the leafy greeeen nicoteeeeen folks a little bit of slack here and there, just to firm up the case, you understand. Suggestions abound in news reports that all this is a result of direction by Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum Jr., who - let's all sing it together; you know the words - is a former tobacco lawyer! "OF COURSE", you're saying to yourself right now, "there obviously had to be some simple reason, grounded in the Republican ethical vacuum in which we float and the reality of partisan money politics, to explain this otherwise inexplicable turn of events." OK...you didn't say it quite that way and used a lot of sex-based obscenities to boot. In any event, inquiring minds - which appear to be solely in the possession of Democratic members of Congress these days - want to know if this in fact happened and, more to the point, how many "ethics in government and law" classes Junior McCallum had to miss to apparently be able to see his way clear to even be involved in this lawsuit, much less directing the Government's case against his old employers, if it did in fact happen...

...just too much stuff to digest all at once, although there almost seems to be a theme developing here. It may be best to just lay back and watch tv, listen to all the informed tut-tutting about the Jackson jury and Howard Dean's "white Christian" riff and missing, pretty, teenage white girls. Doesn't seem to be much else on and it's way too early in the day to get blind whiskey-drunk with despair...
Posted by: Jack K. / 10:50 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

JUDGEMENTS

...you don't run into many of 'em in blogtopia, but it's not uncommon to bump into folks in the bigger world who may have been hitting the snake bite medicine a bit too hard and just don't understand all the fuss over judges that seems to be going on these days. For those lost souls, particularly those in the Pacific Northwest, yesterday would have been an instructive moment, had they the wits to perceive it. Two decisions, one at the state level and the other Federal, rattled the political and social landscape here in the upper left corner of the map like the outcome of plates snapping along the Juan de Fuca subduction zone. In Washington, in a court that the state Republican party judge-shopped their way into to take advantage of the presumably more favorable conservative climate found east of the Cascades, Superior Court Judge John Bridges declared that he wasn't buying the statistical models presented by lawyers representing Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi and that, even if he did, his use of those statistics still showed Democrat Christine Gregoire had won the election. For good measure, he put an exclamation point on his ruling by declaring four of Rossi's votes to be illegal (based on the testimony of four felons who said they voted for Rossi), raising Gregoire's victory margin to 133 votes. This was a big deal for Washington state; although the trial highlighted numerous flaws in the election system that need to be addressed, the verdict - which Rossi elected not to appeal - saved the voters the muted horror and unnecessary expense of a special election for governor and now, finally, after over seven months since the election, the citizens and governments of the state can have certainty in who the Governor actually will be until 2008. Judges matter...

...across the fruity plains back in D.C., the Supremes released a 6-3 decision stating that the Federal government can enforce drug laws regarding the use and possession of home-grown marijuana regardless of the presence of state laws authorizing such production for medicinal purposes. Oregon, natch, is one of the 10 states affected by this ruling, and the state has suspended the issuance of licenses authorizing personal cultivation of pot for medical use. All by itself, this has created a group of angry, distraught users who now sense the weight of a federal drug bust bearing down on them all because they employ the occasional toke to relieve pain and manage the nausea resulting from their very illnesses. They would probably march in mass on Washington if they felt better, but they don't...

...this decision, for Oregon at least, doesn't stand all by itself, though. The states' rights vs. Federal authority issue bears a disturbing resemblance to the on-going battle over Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law. This has been passed twice by the voters, first as a straight initiative and later as a response to an effort by the Roman Catholic Church and conservative Republicans to overturn the original result. It has withstood Congressional assault by various bone-headed half-bright losers willing to do anything on a moment's notice for the big rich corporate contributors who fund their overseas junkets (well, no, I wasn't actually thinking about Tom Delay, but he works so feel free) but damned well want to make sure that nothing that even hints slightly at illicit personal enjoyment should be used to minimize the pain and suffering of sick Americans. It has also survived judicial challenge throught the Ninth Circuit by the Administration, but the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case next term. Yesterday's decision granting supremecy to the Fed's in the question of regulation of controlled substances vs. states rights seems to suggest a potentially bleak parallel to arguments that the Justice Department will be presenting in Gonzalez vs. Oregon. Next year we will see arguments over whether Oregon's right to regulate the practice of medicine - in particular physician-assisted suicide - is superceded by the Federal authority to regulate the manner in which constrolled substances are used in medical care, with the core debate probably hinging on just what exactly is meant by "the public interest" and how is it served by either side in the dispute. The medical marijuana decision was rendered as the result of the coming together of a somewhat odd coalition of moderate and conservative justices. Some of these justices may not be suiting up for the game next year, and the belief systems, judicial sensibilities and experiences of their replacements may have tremendous bearing on the outcome of this next big Oregon case. Beyond that, they may change the nature of how the Supremes view the fundamental concept of a right to privacy that has colored numerous decisions from Roe vs. Wade on down. So for those folks out there who don't wallow with us hogs down in the blogtopian pig sty and who haven't been paying attention, somebody should let them in on the secret: judges do matter...

Cross-posted at Ruminate This
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:44 AM 0 comments

Sunday, June 05, 2005

THE STORY NEXT (THIS?) TIME

...I'm sitting here on a Sunday evening with a special edition of "Hardball" discussing all the ins and outs of last week's Deep Throat revelation; I won't even link to it because...well, you just had to be there (not to mention that right now there's nothing to link to, but never mind). All, and I mean all, of the Nixon apologists are strutting their stuff, trying to use the themes and technologies of the 21st Century to tear down W. Mark Felt as someone just barely beyond the grasp of Guantanamo Bay for the traitorous, perhaps even criminal, behavior that he displayed by whistleblowing to Woodward and Bernstein. Pat Buchanan is special piece of work all of his own, obviously so overcome with a seething anger at Felt that it isn't hard to imagine him chasing the old man down the street with a bull-whip and a good, high-quality cattle prod, the kind that can put a 1500-lbs bull on his knees in a dazed state of confusion. Even beside him, however, we have the spector of David Gergen, expressing disdainful revulsion at the sort of vermin that would even consider doing the sort of thing to which Felt confessed, as if he were talking about some species that eats its own young as a matter of course. I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating: what the hell are these people talking about? The facts of the matter get lost 30-plus years down the road, but they are still available; agents of the Republican party crossed both legal and ethical lines by breaking into the Democratic headquarters to steal and bug and otherwise operate outside of the normal parameters of political behavior. Once that whole operation fell apart and the long arm of the law began to close in, the Office of the President attempted to subvert the Constitutional operation of the Federal government in order to cover up the operation, and then to cover up the cover-up. All these efforts, along with the accompanying effort to deny the Congress of the United States in its rightful effort to engage in its oversight responsibilities, represented no less than a challenge to the foundation of the American form of government...

...there were many heroes and key turning points in this whole saga, and a great deal of the progression of the story was based on the performance of the written and televised media. In the most recent Newsweek, Jonathan Alter writes the opinion piece that he would have needed to write if today's circumstances existed in the early 1970's. Given all that has gone on over the last five years of the most current administration (and, oh, how the fingers want to pick another word...oligarchy, maybe, or junta) and all the questions that swirl around not just the questions of Iraqi war but a whole host of policy issues, it is not just a chilling fable of today's circumstances overlaying a past period of history. It serves as almost a blueprint about how the current structure of government, media, and the talking classes can influence or even control our perception and reaction to the actions of the people in charge of the government. Alter's brutally bleak premise, which probably can't find a better example than the mostly ignored British memo regarding pre-Iraqi-invasion Bush Monkey thinking months before the sales job was rolled out for the American people, is that nothing even close to the action in 1973 and 1974 would ever even have a prayer of happening in today's political and media climate. Having gone through the Watergate era an early 20-something and still clearly remembering the nervous questioning tension of that particular time, nothing about Alter's construction is happy and everything about it is far more chilling, disturbing, and distressing than anything that even a red-hot fiction writer could gin up based on those long vicious months in the early seventies...

...and that's where the old story, Alter's column, Felt's revelation, and the outraged screechings of these bizarre Nixon apologists all come crashing together to form a perfect circle. These people, of which we just can't seem to rid ourselves in anything resembling a balanced discussion of Deep Throat, are trying hard to rewrite the history for the majority of Americans who have no personal recollection of Watergate, laying today's domineering conservative political spin on something that up until the middle of last week had a pretty clearly understood story board. This is being played as almost a last chance for the first rewrite of history, transmorgrifying a clear attempt by Nixon and his minions to slide the US Constitution out from under it's protective glass shield and slip it in the nearest shredder into a sort of disreputable backhanded coup engineered by some disgruntled FBI dead-ender seeking retribution for having been passed over for promotion. Alter's piece has the ugly ring of truth to it; Watergate couldn't happen today because the powers in place wouldn't allow it. The bleatings by Buchanan, Chuck Colson, and the other living stars of the Nixon debacle, the volume that those bleatings are accorded, and the way that Mark Felt is being picked apart in the media makes Jonathan Alter's premise not just an interesting bit of fiction but rather a blueprint on how, at least for the foreseeable future, this administration will fail to truly be held accountable for any of its actions. That is not a cheery thought...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:53 PM 0 comments

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?