<$BlogRSDURL$>

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

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Enjoyable Cruelty 

...it's almost not fair. The ease with which even the most casual observer can find insulting and abusive things to say about Harriet Miers, Gee Dub's mystifying SCOTUS nominee, just doesn't seem to be...well, you know...the cowboy way. This whole situation is either an indication of the absolute, fundamental disrespect that Gee Dub holds for this nation's institutions or - as some chatty inside-the-Beltway types have yakked - shows the absolute, fundamental disarray into which Bush's eminently indictable braintrust has fallen. The angle of the downhill slope along which this once vaunted political juggernaut is sliding can only seem to be steepening up when there isn't any longer The Fear to keep this sort of article from appearing in the Paper of Record of the Nation's own capitol...

...aside from being the sort of thing you really wouldn't care to read about your nominee to the Highest Court In The Land, the article and it's subject show just badly the Bush Monkeys are losing their grip. Some of Gee Dub's own putative allies are virtually waving their private parts in his direction, fearless as they drag his nominee from the uncomfortable position of being an object of riducule to the disastrous position of being a joke. We are rapidly approaching the point where the Senate Judiciary Committee may be willing to say "No, seriously, we'll schedule nomination hearings when you quit fooling around and make an actual nomination". Harriet Miers may be the nicest person in the world and truly magically at making lottery commissions and State bar associations function, but those first rays of sunshine beating down on her nomination were enough to show just about anybody that this was more than a stealth candidate; there almost didn't appear to be any substance behind the cloaking. Instead of wrestling John Roberts-style with her legal opinions from some earlier point in her life, we are left to ponder what the hell kind of intellect lurks behind the barrage of Junior-High-crush correspondences she has sent to Gee Dub over the last decade or so. Even Bush's own fellow-travelers snorted in derision when she praised his brilliant intellect (Harriet, he WAVED at Stevie Wonder! He WAVED at troops in Tikrit who couldn't see him!)...

...Gee Dub's in a bit of a sticky wicket. He's not doing well in those polls that he claims he pays no attention to (he just goes to Hurricane Katrina country every other day or so because he cares) and a lot of his core supporters have one foot in his dinghy and one on the dock...and they're leaning toward the dock if Miers is going to stay in the boat with him. Tossing her overboard would violate his own strong visceral perverse sense of loyality, and it may also be seen as the sort of confused weakness that isn't going to play well with a general public grown tired of all the other issues that seem to swirling around the steps of the White House and Republican leadership in general like raw sewage. Keeping her on board runs the risk of pissing off segments of his base who aren't buying James Dobson's assurances that either God or Karl Rove gave signs that Miers would be a reliable antiabortion vote. In either case, he faces the risk that we'll all be able to hear the whistling noise as his approval rating goes plummeting by and the rest of his term turns into a grim, empty caretaker gig until the movers show up in January '09. It's a cruel time that Harriet Miers faces, with the risk of her fifteen minutes being little more than a tour of ridicule and farce. An equally cruel time threatens to loom up in Gee Dub's future, too, because of the entire aggregation of circumstances that the rejection or forced withdrawal of Miers nomination could catalyze into a meaningful political collapse. Given that Gee Dub and his Bush Monkeys have been the architects to one degree or another of just about every problem they're facing, you gotta admit it is an enjoyable sort of cruelty...
Posted by: Jack K. / 4:08 PM 0 comments

Friday, October 14, 2005

The Land-Use Shot Heard 'Round the State 

...last year, Oregon's voters passed a measure, No. 37, that created a situation where land owners who's land became subject to regulations after the fact could either receive payment for loss in value due to those regulations or have the regulations waived. The ad campaign featured all sorts of heart tugging stories about little old ladies who faced the prospect of an unending diet of cat food omlets because that little real estate nest egg they had nurtured for decades had been snatched away by a bunch of Johnny-come-lately requirements that forbade the profitable use of their land that would keep them out of the poor house. Sadly, while this was certainly a compelling argument, it wasn't really the focus of those forces backing the measure. Their interests lay more in the area of taking all of those wheat fields and tree orchards and pastures out of their relatively low-return agricultural designation and turn them into much more profitable housing developments. It was clearly understood by anyone paying attention that there wasn't a county in the state that would be able to pay the breathtaking megamillion dollar loss of value claims by landowners who wanted to turn peach orchards into 200-house neighborhoods. Today a Marion County District judge ruled that Measure 37 is unconstutitional...

...this isn't the end of the debate, of course. At the very least, the State Supreme Court will need to visit this decision, and - given that the judge also ruled that it fails to pass muster with the US Constitution - the fight may go higher. It is sufficient to say for now, however, that supporters of land use regulations that strive to control unrestricted suburbanization of Oregon's open country have won an interesting first victory. The important aspect of this victory by Oregon's primary defender of open spaces, 1000 Friends of Oregon, and others who are worried about how the encroachment of suburbs up against their agricultural land will have an adverse impact on their ability to operate is that the Measure wasn't struck down for procedural reasons; this is all about the creation of a special class of individuals with separate special priveleges and about the blurring of the lines that define the separation of powers. The pressure to convert agricultural land and open spaces into dense collections of single-family homes crammed onto little postage-stamp lots is a relatively recent occurance that well after the fact changed the balance for people who had owned attractively large tracks of land suitable for development prior to the establishment of Oregon's land use laws a couple of decades ago...

...it was already apparent prior to this ruling that there were some problems with Measure 37, such as transferability of the waiver of land use regulations, and there had been an expressed desire for the legislature to iron out those problems (the phrase "when pigs fly" comes into play at that point). The larger problem, where one landowner suddenly is imbued with rights that his neighbors don't have - not to mention the problem of discovering a whole subdivision just across the fence that wasn't there yesterday filled with residents who don't like the smell of your cows and who are willing to legally challenge your continued right to have those cows - is a compelling issue to be resolved. For the moment, at least, the developers and land-gobblers and greedheads will be held at bay. Round two is coming, and it ought to be lively...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:23 PM 0 comments

Thursday, October 13, 2005

A Revisitation From Conservative Hell 

...it would be nice to think that he's just kidding. But brutal experience suggests that you can't simply ignore Newt, no matter what strange musings issue forth from that particular bloated fat-cat Republican Face. Despite all of his failings and misjudgements and embarrassing personal history and past repudiation, there's always that sort of understated sense of drive and power that one gets from Newt Gingrich. For all of the misguided and - to be honest - silly fearful legend that has been built up around Karl Rove, Newt invented the game, or - if he didn't - certainly played a leading role in establishing the game rules for just exactly how the "politics of personal destruction" should be implemented...

...a presidential run by Newt wouldn't be the sort of thing that one should allow the children to stay up past their bedtime to watch, but - for consenting adults willing to pay the cable access fee - it could be a lively and stimulating experience. Newt was never one to let the simple act of personal destruction be enough; he wants to be a visible part of the beat-down, the man leading the charge. While even the vague potential of a Gingrich Presidency is enough to send a reasonable person to the internet looking for a nice island in the Mariana's chain as a new home, his quest for the White House would certainly be an entertaining ride...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:49 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

At Least the Other Guy Meant It 

...yup. There's just what we need: another president with a deeply professed faith in God and approval ratings in the toilet running around loose at a Habitat for Humanity homebuilding site with sharp pointy nails and unfamiliar hand tools. If his homebuilding skills match his talent for nation-building and budget-balancing, it would be powerfully tempting to suggest to the eventual residents of that particular structure to be prepared to flee to safety at the slightest suggestion of any weather event beyond a moderate thunderstorm...

...I have to confess that I still have a soft spot in my heart for Jimmy Carter, and Habitat for Humanity is a frequent recipient of our charitable giving. It's a shame that his integrity and that organization's honorable work has to be sullied by another in a seemingly endless series of cheap desperate photo op's by our newest "message: I Care" White House occupant...
Posted by: Jack K. / 12:10 PM 0 comments

Sunday, October 09, 2005

A Sorta Happy Ending 

...it's not every day that a story that you stumble across, one having all sorts of tugging emotional undertones, comes up with some sort of happy ending. But the story of the theft of hundreds of prom dresses, shoes, and accessories from the local Central Oregon chapter of Becca's Closet comes pretty darned close. Pam Kirtman, the mother of the young woman who founded the original charity in 2003 and tragically died in a car accident later that year, discovered through an on-line notification system about the Bend theft of Sept. 6 and has arranged to have several hundred dresses shipped - free of charge - to Sara Peterson, the 16-year-old who started the Bend chapter. I'd love to link to today's nearly completely happy ending, but unfortunately the Bend Bulletin has decided to reward my years of faithful subscription by creating an on-line registration service that is far more complicated and invasive than humanly necessary, so that's the end of that, eh?

The happy good-news part of this story is that Sara Peterson's Becca's Closet chapter has been made pretty much whole because of the techology that provided the mother of the original Becca with an opportunity to step up and help. Central Oregon is a profound study in the reality of economic disparity; for all the pretty new neighborhoods springing up like noxious weeds, there is a persistent undercurrent of families who lack the wherewithal to provide their teenage daughters with the luxuries of life that include the sorts of formal dresses that certain school functions call for. A young lady saw this need and took the steps to address it. Cretins unknown took steps, for whatever reason, to take that effort away from her and that opportunity away from the less well-to-do of Central Oregon. Through the grace and dedication of the mom of the original Becca, this opportunity has been restored. The perfect ending to this story would include some reference to the horrible, bloody retribution that was visited on those who - for no reason that could possibly make any sense - stole those original dresses and accoutrements to begin with. That's admittedly not a Christian attitude, and I'll have my own answereing to do for feeling this way, but a nicely framed photographic composition of the perps staked out on an anthill would really be something interesting to see in the local paper. That won't happen, of course, but it still makes this just sorta a Happy Ending...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:42 PM 0 comments

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