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

Friday, January 27, 2006

You Call This A Plan??!! 

...Will Rogers had it right with that famous line of his about not belonging to an organized political party. If far to much of the last decade hasn't already confirmed that, the last few days in the United States Senate can be added to the list. Most Senate Democrats are going to vote against the confirmation of "Strip-Search Sammy" Alito, but a few aren't. A few Senators are threatening to launch a filibuster against Alito's confirmation vote, but others aren't willing to support the filibuster attempt, even though they are going to vote against confirmation. Some days it's a good thing to be a registered independent...

With one clever decisive move, Democratic Senators have both made themselves look weak, disorganized, and ineffectual while at the same time accomplishing nothing that will really matter as far as the country's future or the makeup of the Supreme Court is concerned. This is neither an effort that demonstrates a strong assertive minority worthy of leadership consideration or the sort of thing is is likely to fire up the troops for the upcoming midterm elections. I would throw my hands up in the air in disgust if they weren't so tired from physically restraining myself from beating my head against the wall...

There clearly isn't going to be an epic battle over the Alito nomination, even though he has a documented judicial history that is rich with examples demonstrating a legal mind that thinks along tracks not traveled by the majority of Americans, according to any poll not commissioned by the RNC or it's cutouts. Maybe it's all the early positioning for the '08 presidential race causing this; maybe it's the temperment of people who have been inside the beltway too long. Maybe it's just bad luck. Whatever the reason, things don't look good for anyone hoping to see Alito's confirmation voted down - and I count myself among those - and I'm beginning to fear that enough people are going to start noticing performances like this to affect Democratic chances to make gains in Congress this November. Who knows, maybe this is actually part of some inscrutable convoluted plan that will later manifest sweeping electoral success for Congressional Democrats. I'm not holding my breath...
Posted by: Jack K. / 11:21 AM 0 comments

Missing the Point at the Blue Oval 

...it's probably not that big a deal that the plant manager at Ford's Dearborn truck plant - backed by the union, no less - insists that only those employees driving vehicles manufactured by Ford or its subsidiaries get permits to park in the 'good' parking lot. You can, on the one hand, make a pretty good case that, since these employees should be supporting the products they make, little extra perks can be denied to those who don't. It is Ford's parking lot after all. On the other hand, this move is a compelling example of "missing the point"...

...Ford just announced plant closings and 30,000 layoffs, and they did it because people are too often selecting other brands of cars rather than theirs. Analysists say that Ford is losing money because they aren't properly placing themselves in the market. They are losing market shares on many lines of vehicles because there are too many better choices out there. Every FoMoCo plant manager in the country can ban competitors' products from any parking lot he or she choses to, but that doesn't get to the fundamental problem that led to all those layoffs. Maybe what they should be giving consideration to is...oh, I don't know...maybe making cars that their employees would actually elect to buy instead of those of their competitors...

...just a thought...
Posted by: Jack K. / 10:58 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Sometimes The Nail Needs Hammering 

...as a modern man, I'm completely comfortable with all the various ways that we are supposed to apply society's rules. In a modern sophisticated society such as ours, violence solves nothing and can only lead to extensive unnecessary complications. It is the role of the properly appointed world of official-dom to deal objectively with the various and sundry disputes that may rear up between individuals. I understand all that...really. On the other hand, as the father of a teenage girl, I could roll with this guy...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:17 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Mistah Murtha Will Be Accepting Apologies Now 

...the Pentagon won't tell you, even if you ask them directly, how our forces have been affected by repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Oh, they'll tell you moral is as high as ever, everything is copacetic, and we are going to win, by God. What they won't tell you, even though they have the information readily at hand, is that the Army is approaching that ragged edge, suffering from poor recruitment, facing the risk of declining reinlistments, and possibly dangerously close to being incapable of responding to another troop-intensive conflict somewhere in the world. There's always two stories, of course: the one that somebody wants you to believe and the truth...

The only real question is whether or not the Army is "broken" right now. Like trying to decide when a recession begins, that is probably a question that can be answered at some point after the fact. This study seems to be at pains to avoid saying what John Murtha said after he visited Iraq, but that may only be an artifact of an insider's native allegiance. It may also be a moot point, because the degree to which the Army is in trouble - "broken", as it were - is mostly in the eyes of the beholder. What may be more important is the first principle: the Army is in trouble and things will only get worse if the current tempo is maintained. Likely candidates for enlistment are voting with their feet, with those feet fleeing the presence of Army recruiters. The need to offer expanded enlistment and reenlistment bonuses - not to mention raising enlistment age to 42 - is a statement in itself both about the state of the Army and the public's view of Gee Dub's Grand Iraqi Adventure. The Army may not be "broken" yet, but it's a ways away from "all better"...
Posted by: Jack K. / 3:01 PM 0 comments

Monday, January 23, 2006

They're BAAACK!! 

...it is simply a fact of life that there are people who don't want to pay taxes. Now, most of us don't do it with any great cheer, but these folks really don't want to pay taxes. Their reasons are varied; some are staunch libertarians, others just don't like all those liberal programs like schools and police and state snowplows, and some - quite frankly - would like to see a world where the State does not have the resources to regulate their particular activities and see this as a way to eliminate all those pesky overseers of the health, welfare, safety, and wellbeing of the State's citizens. For whatever reason, they would like to see the state's budget restrained, preferably into unconsciousness. The latest iteration of this effort in Oregon comes to us courtesy of the Taxpayers Association of Oregon who, working in league with the anti-tax FreedomWorks organization of Washington, D.C., would like to visit the very budgetary disaster that Colorado is trying to dig itself out from under on our state...

...known in Colorado as the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights, or TABOR, the plan basically allows states to muddle along, barely able to support basic functions but unable to respond to any needs in any of the vast array of state services that many people rely on but don't necessarily want to pay for. At least that what it allows in the good times; in the bad times, such as during a recession when budget cutting is necessary, the eventual outcome is a permanently reduced budget that can't catch up to even basic needs once circumstances improve without both legislative and voter supermajorities. It's like the Oregon Kicker law with a suicide pact stapled onto it. Given the problems Oregon just went through with school funding during this most recent downturn, an Oregon version of TABOR would probably result in circumstances that not even Gary Trudeau's "Doonesbury" would have the heart to make fun of. The core truth is simple: the backers of this initiative don't concern themselves much with children, or potholes, or how long you're going to wait for a State Trooper in remote Eastern Oregon, or anything else than their narrow agenda. It would be helpful if these advocates were to step up and offer to forego a full school year for their children or receiving road maintenance or public safety services on behalf of those of us willing to pay for those things. But they won't. It's not part of their gig. They demonstrated that in Colorado they would like to do it here, too...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:05 PM 0 comments

Sunday, January 22, 2006

For One Night, The Hell With All That Other Stuff 

...I watch a good deal of sports on television, but I only have any sort of true passion for two things: NFL football and NASCAR auto racing (did I mention that I own guns and drink beer?). These twin sporting passions came from my upbringing, what with football being the only sport in which I could perform adequately - no need to hit a fastball high in the strike zone or hit the 15-foot jumper with the game on the line - and being the son of a man who spent many years engaged in the local stock car racing circuit as a hobby. Since the beginning of the 1976 NFL season, I have been a fan of the Seattle Seahawks, almost exclusively because they were the Pacific Northwest NFL team. During my upbringing in Central Idaho, there wasn't an NFL team within a good two-day drive, but a real live Northwestern Team came into being at the start of my senior year in college. Since then I have lived and died with the fortunes of this sometimes hapless group, watching far too often as defeat was ripped from the jaws of victory and each disappointment was heaped upon the previous insult. Disappointment was to be expected; the euphoria of victory was a cherished - but rare - experience...

...tonight, however, all that has changed in a "forever" sort of way that only sports fans truly understand. My Team, the Seattle Seahawks, are going to Superbowl XL. The early line of this game two weeks hence against the Pittsburg Steelers is - all by itself - another manifestation of the disregard in which the nation holds the Pacific Northwest. Seattle, on some boards, was the underdog in today's game, and they are the early underdog in the Superbowl, regardless of the fact that they embarrassed the majority of the pundits who were enthralled with tonight's opponents, the Carolina Panthers. It's a northwestern thing, and we're used to it. Even though the PacNW is the home of Microsoft, Nike, Starbucks, Boeing, Albertsons, Safeway, REI, and Costco, among others, and even though several recent musical genre's originated in the Northwest, and even though some of the most original and far-thinking public policy has been born in the PacNW (no, I'm NOT talking about assisted suicide), the fact remains that this part of the country is a generally ignored part of the country. And, yes, we have a chip on our shoulder about all of this. It has been a long and painful thirty years for those of us who are football fans (one can only imagine the life that Seattle Mariners baseball fans have been living). But tonight, we are all realizing that the Seahawks are going to the Superbowl for the very first time, and that simple fact - win or lose - has a more powerful impact on this darly misunderstood corner of the country than any event in a long time. So for one night, nothing about Halliburtion, the NSA, the Patriot Act, or Tom Delay really matters. For this one night, all that matters is that my Seahawks are, at long last, going to the Superbowl. We'll worry about that other stuff tomorrow....

...crossposted at the other place...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:18 PM 0 comments

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