<$BlogRSDURL$>

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

Friday, February 17, 2006

Rummy Searching For A Clue 

...somebody, somewhere, needs to sit Don Rumsfeld down and explain the facts of life to him. He has clearly demonstrated ever since he returned to the scene with Gee Dub's Supreme Court appointment to the White House that he simply doesn't have a clue. His views on how the military should be restructured, his management of the Grand Iraq Adventure, and his total misunderstanding of insurgent warfare has been the sort of performance that would get most people invited to submit a heartfelt resignation - to spend more time with the family - in any functional organization. Whether it's because of the total tone-deafness of Rummy and his folks or because they really don't understand, the hits just keep rolling on. Today's nonsensical observations are only the most recent of a long list of perfect examples...

We're not losing the digital information war because a bunch of people in caves are more in tune with how to use digital-age tools than the finest minds in the Pentagon (I have no idea if that is an oxymoron or not); we are losing the digital information war because of Abu Ghraib (and all those other prisons that don't get the coverage) and Guantanamo and the occupation of Iraq in general and our treatment of Muslims in general and all those blood-spattered terrified little girls at all those check points with their dead parents slumped over in the front seat of the bullet-pocked car and all those other seemingly intentional efforts to demonstrate to followers of Islam that we do not respect their cultures, their religion, or them as individual humans. You would have to be clueless to even be caught at some podium musing about our communications failings with respect to the evil terrorists on the same week that an Australian newspaper released more Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse photos and demonstrated exactly why we are losing that propaganda war. But then, you just can't overestimate a guy like Donald Rumsfeld...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:06 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Westlund Runs to Daylight 

...as was previously noted by Carla at Loaded Orygun, my local State Senator, the nominally Republican Ben Westlund of Bend in Central Oregon let it be known in time for the deadline in this morning's Bend Bulletin that he would be departing the Republican party and may well consider a run at the race to be Oregon's Governor. As it turns out, that may well have been uppermost in his mind and not merely a niggling possibility, because not too long after changing his registration in Deschutes County from Republican to Independent, Westlund was in Salem signing up to be a candidate for governor. He has a tough row to hoe in acheiving even the goal of getting on the ballot, given that the legislature passed legislation not that long ago making it almost impossible for non-affiliated candidates to get on the ballot. Westlund will now need to gather 0ver 18,000 signatures of people who are either registered as unaffiliated with either major party or willing to renounce in writing their right to vote in their party's primary. Given the angry mood of Oregon voters right now, he just might be able to make that particular nut in Deschutes County alone...

Westlund is an odd duck in terms of what has become of Oregon politics. With the extreme ends of the spectrum having captured control of the party organizations - especially on the Republican side - Westlund has found himself on more than one occasion being on the wrong side of both local and state party functionaries on issues. The most recent dust-up was his support, along with another Republican and two Democrats, of legislation that would have created the right of civil unions for gay and lesbian couples. While demonstrating his rather moderate views concerning social issues, his sponsorship of that bill almost sent Deschutes County Republican officials straight to bed with sick headaches, even to the point of stimulating angry mutterings about a recall attempt; that talk was only cut short by the real world realization by smarter monkeys that he would probably win such a battle, bolt the party anyway, and take a seat away from the party....

Westlund is in no way a Democrat, and nobody should be confused by the idea that he might want to become one. He is a fiscal conservative and only a moderate on social issues. What sets him apart, however, is the strong perception of a sense of personal and polical integrity. His time as a state legislator has featured an uncomfortable relationship with the local Republican authorities, a quintessentially classic collection of wingnuts worthy of being a direct match to any beady-eyed, broad-bellied brace of bristle-headed whackjob rednecks running some county in the deep south. Westlund's problem has been his antebellum sense of how the political process could work if any sort of bipartisanship were still the rule of the day. His is a political attitude that hearkens back to a Republican legacy of Governor Tom McCall and US Senators Mark Hatfield and Bob Packwood, three men who couldn't get elected to be precinct captains in the Oregon Republican party of today. Westlund won't be given much of a chance to succeed in his quest to be governor, more because that opinion is an ingrained part of political punditry than because it's true. Governor Ted Kulongoski is not held in high regard in Democratic circles, as witnessed by the fact that potential opponents are coming out of the woodwork to run against him, although I will always have the greatest degree of respect for him because of the decent, honorable manner with which he has chosen - almost singularly amongst elected officials at any level anywhere in the country - to honor our troops who have given their lives in Gee Dub's misbegotten war. On the Republican side, we're faced with the same old retreads who took a stab at this the last time, and Kevin Mannix - as the nominal front runner - offers only the sort of positions and platform points that send thinking Oregonians shrieking toward the door. Westlund doesn't want to be just a spoiler in this upcoming contest, even though he may well be; for the life of me, though, I can't figure out who would benefit from his "spoiler" role. Much of the governmental life in Oregon is a big mess right now, and the pain of having been the laughing stock of the nation a couple of years ago because of our failure to adequately fund schools is still a fresh wound for anybody who cares. The reasons for our problems are a pox on both parties, although the party of Karen Minnis is objectively more to blame. The fault however, lays at the feet of anyone from either party who is more interesting in winning than in governing; Oregonians are growing tired of that game and Westlund has shown that he doesn't want to play it. Ben Westlund could be a spoiler, all right, because he could spoil the dreams of both Republicans and Democrats and become another governor elected as an independent primarily because his message, directed at getting Salem back to governing instead of winning political fights, could have a great deal more resonance with the voters than anything that either party can come up with. The way things are shaking out right now, I'd vote for him...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:06 PM 0 comments

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Hustling to Get Out Behind the Story 

...it almost doesn't even matter anymore what the spin-minions of the White House have to say about any possible relationship between Jack Abramoff and George W. Bush. Abramoff has been running his mouth off sufficiently to make it pretty clear that either he is either some sort of undercover Democratic operative trying to take down the presidency or a simple crook who has had his 'come to Jesus' moment and sees no further use in protecting the vast collection of important Republicans who can't help him get out of this tight airless box into which he has fetched himself if simple truth telling will help him get out of prison before his children start receiving their first AARP solicitations. Abramoff has made it pretty clear that Gee Dub does, too, know who he is and all of this carrying on, so fascinatingly reminiscent of Bush's sudden amnesia about his long close friendship with Ken Lay when the Enron bubble burst, wouldn't seem capable of withstanding either Abramoff's testimony or his chatty e-mail habit...

The only thing that has saved this administration from actually bursting into flame before our eyes has been the stark failure of big-time media to get beyond their fearful fixation on this bizarre "he said/he said" brand of 'balance'. Now, with the minions finally coming out to answer the fact (on the weekend, of course) that...well..yeah...there may in fact be a photo or two where Smilin' Jack and Gee Dub show up in the same frame, it will be time to see how facts may be handled. The NYT and Time magazine publication of what may well be the first of a host of Abramoff/Bush photo's is a classic example of a far too controlling White House going into protection mode and failing to get out in front of the story when the opportunity to do so was sitting right there in front of their noses. We've had plenty of examples over my lifetime of situations where failing to get out in front of the story caused an administration great harm. Nixon resigned, Reagan - at least in the short term - lost the luster of his legacy, and Clinton faced impeachment - improperly, and mostly for reasons of retribution - primarily as a result of their failing to handle the story, but the press played a major role in those particular stories. The Bush Monkeys are showing that they are at least as incapable - if not more so - of managing the basic story, and this isn't the first time for this crowd. It's becoming almost comfortable to assume that they will deny everything and engage in vicious personal assaults against opponents every time this sort of thing happens. Unfortunately for them, a picture is worth more than any thousands upon thousands of words that they might try to gin up to explain that picture away...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:15 PM 0 comments

Jerry, I'm Sorry 

...I'm not ashamed to admit it. Those of us of a certain age owe former President Gerald Ford an apology. We gave him a hard time about his pratfalls and trips and stumbles, but we really raked him over the coals for his propensity, both during and after his presidency, for conking people in various regions of their bodies with golf balls. Being in a gallery when he was on the links was, in the minds of many a wag, hazardous duty worthy of - at the very least - extra pay, if not some consideration for full body armor. Jerry, however, was a benign sprite compared to Big Dick Cheney with a 28 gauge shotgun in his hands...

Harry Whittington is a lucky man, given that he chose to go quail hunting with this particular vice president, who has a most impressive medical staff within arms reach for well-documented reasons. The folks at the National Rifle Association, on the other hand, have to be locked in small smokey rooms trying to come up with some reason to excuse Cheney ever coming into their official national presence ever again. For all their faults, and they are many, the NRA is a major proponent of safe hunting practices, which Big Dick just blew in almost every way that you could possible list. They'll think of something, I'm sure, because the link between the Republican party and the NRA is so tight that highly skilled neurovascular surgeons would weep at the prospect of trying to carve them apart so that both patients survived. The most important lesson we can take from this episode, however (aside from the obvious jokes about having gathered final, visceral proof that this is truly the gang that can't shoot straight), is that Jerry Ford and his golf clubs weren't the worst thing in the world. A golf ball in the head a hundred yards down the fairway is nothing compared to a snootful of buckshot, and we should send our sincere apologies to Mr. Ford for having carried on the way we did...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:19 PM 0 comments

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