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

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Thoughts to Ponder on A Spring Break Beach 

...and so we are off tommorrow, Mrs. Jack K., my two surly teenaged contributions to the next generation's effort to pay off George W. Bush's massive deficit, and I, headed to the Central Oregon Coast to walk the wind-lashed beaches with the biting rain in our faces hoping to catch a glimpse of the spouts of migrating whales just off the surf. Why would we elect to do such a thing?

THAT'S why we would do such a thing. Even absent yesterday's 6 inch snow fall, the bottom line is fed by a hunger to see bare ground and smell those fertile scents of spring. There are strange persistent rumors of green grass and blooming vegetation on the coast; that promise is tremendously exciting. There may be even more sporadic than usual posting during the next week; our hidden redoubt week has no in-room telephones and the promise of wireless connection in our particular abode is half-hearted at best. And who knows how long this will last; that lurking, foreboding Cascadia Subduction Zone just off the Oregon coast may decide that 300 years of pent-up energy is enough, and I must admit that this, my beloved laptop, is going to be pretty low on the list of things I will choose to grab for that mad, terrified scramble up the brushy timbered slope behind our hidden redoubt to get above the tsunami line. But that's a sucker's bet on any given day, and those of us who live in the midst of a fire-dominated forested ecosystem surrounded by a glowering brace of restless dormant volcanoes - especially those of us who went through that St. Helens thing back in 1980 -learned a long time ago to always have a "what if" list, constantly updated and monitored, in the back of our brains. But a thought before hurling the luggage in the family ride and heading over the mountains to the coast...

In my most recent copy of Newsweek, Jonathan Alter has a piece about Rahm Emanuel, a Democratic Congressman from the Chicago area and the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. It speaks to both the hopes and fears of leftist stalwarts, touching on campaign themes that can be successful as well as those that will result in another electoral beatdown. The equation is stupidly simple: campaigning against Gee Dub as some twisted form of evil who needs to be censured, if not impeached, is a losing strategy that plays directly into Republican flag-waving, "war on Terra", "fer us or agin us" hands, but campaigning against each of the 230 or so Republicans on a host of issues that are at the same time both national and local is as good a place to start the war as any. As Alter documents, there are a host of issues where the Republican majority has slavishly followed it's president, even though polls consistently show American citizens on the other side of the issue. While they may be desperately trying to distance themselves from Gee Dub now and are desperately hoping for more talk about that mythical war on Terra, the fact remains that House Republicans are on the record in favor of shovelling major tax breaks to the rich while cutting student loans and veterans' benefits and saddling the elderly with a Medicare drug plan that - aside from guaranteeing new yatch's, personal jets, and Aspen ski villa'a all around for the movers and shakers of Big Pharma - would cause cutting edge Ivy League physicists to weep with dispair over its complexity. They have endeavored to criminalize stem-cell research despite the fact that consistent majorities of Americans express mystification as to why tossing fertilized embryos in an incinerator is more sanctified than seeking cures for some of the most brutal diseases to inflict their friends, neighbors, and loved ones. While they insist on wanting to constantly talk about how Democrats are going to get into your pockets, these Republicans want to get into your living rooms and kitchens and bedrooms, telling you how you should live and how you should die and what you can Google without hearing strange echoes and clicking noises on your telephone or wonder why your librarian doensn't seem quite so friendly any more...

...and then there's Jack Abramoff.

There are so many things that so much of the left wants to fight over, and a lot of those proposed battles are righteous in their own way. Abortion rights, gay marriage, and hurling Gee Dub bodily from the White House over what is at least powerful circumstantial evidence of lying to foment the Iraq invasion are just a couple of a growing list of issues. What the hell, throw in NSA warrantless wiretapping, the hopelessly inept Katrina response, and Cheney's dismissive and insulting "energy policy" onto that pile. This upcoming election isn't, however, going to be about administration policies and actions per se. It's about the fawn-eyed unquestioning support that Republican members of Congress have lavished on Gee Dub and their individual votes in support of all his misguided policies. Democrats have a chance to stem the fetid, corrupt tide of Republican dominance if they focus on that whole universe of individual issues where majority Republican incumbents cast votes to support the well-to-do and the corporate fat cats while ripping away the famous and long honored 'safety net' that was always supposed to be there to provide protection to the rest of us. Democrats can succeed if they forget about campaigning for the opportunity to exact revenge on Bushco itself and instead focus on all those other issues where the majority of Americans don't agree with the Republican majority...

...and there's always Jack Abramoff...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:10 PM 0 comments

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