The Grumpy Forester

...it was fore-ordained that somebody from the Bush administration would show up to engage in some serious hand-holding with the leaders of Oregon's government about the unmitigated disaster the Bush administration created with it's Part D Medicare/Medicaid drug plan. In their unfortunate haste to create another conduit for the transfer of taxpayers dollars to good friends, somehow the Bush Monkeys missed the part where millions of senior citizens might just be a bit miffed about major screw-ups in the delivery of - in many cases - life-sustaining drugs because of what we have come to understand as the inherent incompetence of this particular adminstration. Whether it be war, peace, or natural disaster, the one thing you have been able to set your watch to is the undeniable certainty that they will screw it up, doing so with a flair for ineptitude that hasn't been seen for over a century. Today, for Oregon, it was Michael Leavitt, promising that the fix is coming, everything is going to be just fine, and you shouldn't leave a pharmacy, no matter what, without that prescription in your hand. Given the way the program is working right now, apparently he is relying on some sort of Second Amendment approach by seniors, perhaps encouraging them to wave a Magnum in the face of any pharmicist who refuses to fill a prescription because their name doesn't show up on the inept federal list...

Simple facts inhabit this story: the new system is a mess, despite the better part of a year's worth of lead time to get to the point; in Oregon, at least 10,000 citizens have been delayed, denied, or supremely inconvenienced by the failure of the new program. Oregon, as have at least 18 other states, has stepped up to the plate to cover at least some of the cost that Gee Dub's failed plan hasn't yet figured out. Leavitt stopped short of committing the fed's to covering Oregon's expenses, and he did so for a reason: they aren't going to do it. It's only the first joke being played on taxpayers by Bushco; the states will have to fight with the drug companies - probably in court, probably for years - to gain reimbursement for expenses they should not have had to pay in the first place. But the next evil joke on seniors and the states still lurkes around the corner. This new spiffy drug plan has that infamous "doughnut whole" where no drug costs are covered by the plan and where most seniors' expenses reside. We haven't even arrived at the point where tens upon tens of thousands of Medicare/Medicaid recipients discover that there is this sudden huge gulf awaiting them where the entire bill for their drugs over a roughly two thousand dollar span is theirs to pay...

As could be predicted, we've seen the first wave comprised of White House appologists spouting soothing words to keep the old folk from taking up pitchforks and storming the ramparts. There are at least two more reckonings to come, first when the States realize they aren't going to be supported by the adminstration in their emergency expenditures, and second when thousands of seniors begin hitting the low side of that "doughnut hole) and essentially lose federal coverage for their drug expenditures. The second is more insidious because it isn't a product of Bushco's innate incompetence, but rather is a product of Bushco's innate corruption in flinging money-earning favors to reliable contributors regardless of the impacts on the average citizen (think Enron; think West Coast power shortage from the first term). It's just another example of why you probably shouldn't have the Supreme Court selecting a president instead of relying on the democratic process. That's just a bunch of water under the bridge, unfortunately; we ended up with a new reality back in December of 2000 and this nation-wide foul-up of the Medicare drug plan is just one more visible manifestation of that new reality...

...somewhere out there in the dark tonight, on those cold, snowswept, mean streets of Montana, a lone figure can be seen, trudging forlornly through the drifting snow, pushing a wheelbarrow filled with satchels of cold hard cash. Far from being a easy mark for whatever cheap highwayman who may come down the road, or from being the bearer of the only kind of hope that wads of money can promise, this lonely figure is finding himself to be a pariah, unwanted by even those to whom he has offered the bags of cash and who could really use it. But it's Montana Senator Conrad Burns yoked to that wheelbarrow, and the cash in those bags has the stench of Jack Abramoff's dirty dealings all over it, and Burns can't even give it away in order to find some sense of public redemption...

...with a public relations flurry, Burns' office announced that he would be donating the Abramoff money, to which there are ties to services rendered, to local Indian tribes. In no mood to be his source of political salvation, the tribal councils of Montana declined the offer, letting it be quite publicly known that his money was dirty. This is going to present a problem for the Honorable Senator not too terribly far down the road. The mind's virtual camera can already picture the billboards, TV advertisements, bumper stickers, lapel pins, bookmarks, straw boater hats, flyers, pencils, and radio spots saying "It's time to have a Senator we can be proud of again" offered up by whatever Democratic opponent who may end up challenging Burns. Montana has for a number of years been a nominally red state (probably more purple, actually) but the current Democratic Governor Brian Schweitzer has demonstrated that a Democrat can handily win a statewide election in the current political climate, even though that Democrat may not be the sort of person that progressives would flock to in lots of other political settings...

...chickens, when they're coming home to roost, can make a terrific noise. In the rapidly shrinking world of Conrad Burns there is a wild flapping and clucking going on right now. Tribes will remember his efforts to thwart their soverign nation status a decade ago; they will see the money-greased steps he has taken while under the thrall of Abramoff's Indian casino gambits while either ignoring or aggressively opposing local tribal innitiatives over the years; they will watch his desperate efforts to redeem himself by shoveling off sums equivalent to his Abramoff take on the nearest willing redeemer. So will everybody else. These aren't good days to be Conrad Burns, but he's earned every minute of the experience...

...it has been such a long, brutal battle, but it appears - for now, at least - that the battle over Oregon's "Death with Dignity" Act is over and the Act, along with State's Rights, is the WINNER. It has taken eleven long years of conflict and controversy, and it is no surprise to find John Roberts and Antonin Scalia in opposition given that the Roman Catholic Church has sunk so much time and money into trying to sink the Act...

Starting as Measure 16 in 1994, DDA was first challenged by Oregon's Republican-led legislature at the behest of the Church in 1997 with a ballot referal measure placing the repeal of DDA on the ballot as Measure 51; that effort was defeated by an even larger margin than the original "yes" vote on Measure 16. The anti-DDA effort later moved to the US Congress, where it was narrowly overturned in a Senate vote that featured a nicely staged bit of emotional theater by Oregon Senator Gordon Smith as he voted against the will of a twice-expressed majoritiy of Oregonians on behalf of that core extremely conservative support base that he doesn't really like to talk about. After the 2000 election, Attorney General John "I did NOT lose to a dead man" Ashcroft attempted to inappropriatedly use Federal drug control laws to gut DDA by threatening loss of prescription-writing authority for any Oregon doctor taking part in an "assisted suicide". His effort was blocked by a Federal District Judge, which was later affirmed by that crazed band of left-wing wacko's on the Ninth Circuit, and now has been upheld by a majority on SCOTUS that the presence of Sammy Alito couldn't have threatened...

There is a tremendous sense of relief for DDA supporters. I've never been a big fan of assisted suicide, but - as with abortion - I've supported it because it isn't my place to tell other people how to make their life decisions. More to the point, this is an important victory in the battle between a right to personal freedom and Big Tony Scalia's personal nonjudicial value judgements, reaffirming an individual's right to be left alone. That alone makes this a good day...

...Arizona may be facing the worst drought that it has experienced in several centuries. Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado have been enduring a thoroughly bizarre winter season of wildfires, and new Red Flag Warnings have been issued in Texas for winds and low humidity, which is the sort of thing that can make an experienced and completely beaten down firefighter start casting around for applications to whatever college or university that can offer the quickest route to a degree in accounting or business management or anything other than spending unremitting endless days and nights of too little sleep, iffy food, and primative living conditions trying to keep the world from burning up...

...we don't have those sorts of problems here in the Pacific Northwest. Not by a long shot. Seattle residents just lost their chance to break the record for consecutive days of rain by virtue of a dreary rainless Sunday that will be followed by more days of rain...but no record (I mean, if you have to put up with this crap...). The Olympia, WA, area is well beyond that with no end in sight, and most of western Oregon is entering it's third week of flood warnings and watches. Here on my perch on the eastern flanks of the Oregon Cascades, the only days over the last month that haven't brought snow are the ones that have brought rain. We have had some sunshine, but it usually lasts only a couple of hours between the rain (or snow) front that just passed through and the snow (or rain) front that is just about to strike. Over half the counties in Oregon have been included in a State declaration of emergency from flooding. Maybe it's global warming, maybe it's La Nina, or maybe Pat Robertson has some pertinent observations about what is going on, but the fact is that folks out here would be more than happy to share our wealth with the Southwest. We could use the respite, and they could, too...

...there was a time not so very long ago when Arizona Senator John McCain was something of a neo-hero to the center of political thought and even an interesting character to elements of the left. A couple of years ago there was even a strong groundswell of support for John Kerry's idea of inviting McCain onto the Democratic ticket as Vice President. That's all starting to seem like such a long time ago. Aside from his almost unseemly support of George W. Bush's reelection - you certainly couldn't have trusted me on the same stage as Gee Dub if he had done to me what he and his minions did to McCain in South Carolina in 2000 - McCain has been cutting some pretty big holes in the hull of that icoclastic ship he's been trying to sail over the last several years as a result of his support for an administration - antitorture legislation aside - that seems to view him as little more that an interesting plaything. Now, however, he seems intent on separating himself from most of that independent center with which he connected back in 2000. Perhaps in an effort to play to the extreme fearful right wing of the Republican party, he's making the sort of noises that you would think a man who has experienced the bleakest, darkest side of warfare would have some strong reservations to broach...

First, McCain is openly offering up the prospect of military action against Iran if they don't step away from whatever nuclear aspirations they are nursing. There are lots of problems with his coy suggestion, not the least of which is the fact that we are simply not in any sort of position to do much more than engage in aerial warfare against Iranian nuclear and military sites. While we may be overtaxed by Gee Dub's Grand Iraqi Adventure from an overall military standpoint, we do certainly have the air assets necessary to bomb just about anything in Iran that we care to into little pieces of rubble, but that will neither pacify the Iranians, bring their opposition groups to our side, or earn us any brownie points with some of the majority Shiite groups in Iraq who have connections with elements in Iran. It also further destabilizes the Middle East, as far as our interests are concerned, because 1) it will most certainly be understood to be an attack on behalf of Israel which, regardless of the rightness of the attack, will increasingly stir up the more militant elements in the region and, B) it will establish, once and for all in the minds of Muslim Arabs, the clear understanding that we are their greatest enemy, given the lack of curiousity that we have been expressing over Israel's nuclear program over the last few decades...

Just to add to his apparent efforts to burnish that conservative image he would need to succeed in a 2008 Republican presidential nomination effort, McCain - on the same TV program - drew the perfect dividing line between conservative thought about saving the lives of unborn American babies and saving the lives of actual living, breathing people who happen to have been had the poor luck to be in the proximity of the rumored possiblity of a potential presence of the unverified suggestion of the existence of a real live Al Qeada second...or third or maybe fourth...in command, or maybe his secretary or driver or chef or something. While McCain finds the death of an unborn child in this country to be a singular unmitigated and unforgivable sin against the very name of God, the death of seventeen men, women, and - and let's not lose that particular point - children is nothing more than a regretable cost in that Greater War on Terra.

"We regret it. We understand the anger that people feel, but the United States' priorities are to get rid of Al-Qaeda, and this was an effort to do so," the Republican lawmaker said.

No, John, you don't really understand at all. This isn't the voice of a person who understands the horror of war, it's voice of a hot-rocks Naval Aviator who spent time pickling off bombs onto an unknown terrain until the dice came up snake-eyes and all the cockpit gages snapped over to "this isn't your day". This is an attitude that says you better hope to Hell that known terrorist cells don't move into your duplex, because - if they do - all the hopes and dreams you have for your children and all the love and plans you have for and with your spouse might well come to a profoundly emphatic end when those Hellfire missles come crashing through the wall of your dining room. McCain would deny that connection, but he is talking about little less than just exactly that. There isn't any possible human defense for the kinds of lame apologistic justification that McCain is spouting; it is at best xenophobic and more likely simply racist to intermingle lame expressions of sympathy with statements that "these things can happen" and that they may well happen again. His observation is simply a human, Christian outrage...

Like I said, there was a time, not all that long ago, when John McCain seemed like some sort of answer to people who had grown tired of traditional politics. Something has happened, though, and McCain has apparently turned some unseen corner that most of his center-left supporters can't and probably won't even try to negotiate. It's safe to say - all other considerations aside - that he won't any time in the near future have to deal with the embarassment of fending off Democratic overtures. Dropping bombs regardless of the consequences may please some constituency, but smarter people aren't going to sign onto that practice as either a foreign policy or an excuse...