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

Friday, April 07, 2006

Ron Wyden - Rattling the Cage Doors Again 

...if one were to sit down, move to one's quite place, and think about the subject objectively, one would certainly have to run headlong into the question of 'How the Hell Did We Here In Oregon Ever Elect Gordon Smith to the US Senate'. The immediate second question, of course would be "Why the Hell Did We Reelect Him.' One would get to that point pretty quickly for one simple reason: Ron Wyden, United States Senator from Oregon. Whenever something needs fixing, whenever a stand needs to be taken on behalf of the beliefs of Oregon's citizens, whenever something needs to be done, whenever an Oregonian US Senator is coming to the local community, it's always Ron Wyden that you see, even though he's trapped in the cage of minority membership. While Smith, who supposedly prides himself on being the kind of guy who works behind the scenes to get things done, consistently remains so far behind the scenes that he no longer seems to be in the theater anymore, Wyden is out there, fighting the battles - both local and national - that need to be fought and rattling the doors on the cage. Today was a perfect example...

In a speech on the Senate floor, Wyden called for a vote to require the president to present a reasonable plan for prosecuting the ongoing war in Iraq (all honor, by the way, to Keith Olberman on MSNBC's "Countdown" for keeping track of the tally of days since the announcement of "Mission Accomplished"; I wonder when we'll see that banner for sale on E-bay) and a budget for that particular prosecution.
I simply ask the president to come to Congress and describe his plan and his budget, in detail, and let us consider its potential to succeed before we, with our silence, consent to three more years of exceptionally costly involvement in Iraq.

Beautiful, man. There isn't a hint of "cut and run" to his proposal, and yet it strikes at the heart of the two main failings of Bushco since it decided to launch Gee Dub's Grand Iraqi Adventure: having a friggin' plan, and offering an honest cost for implementing that plan. Nothing will come of Wyden's proposal, mostly because the Republican leadership in Congress isn't yet scared enough of the undertow from Bush's sinking ship to actually swim away from the very impending disaster that they helped to create. They simply are incapable of forcing that hapless gang of losers in the White House to actually come up with a stragey that includes actions beyond horsewhipping the 'elected' Iraqi leadership into appearing to meet a bunch of artificial, meaningless deadlines and pretending to spend huge wads of cash on nation-building. Ron Wyden laid down a challenge today from the well of the Senate that every US Senator should be making, but far too many aren't. Gordon Smith wouldn't even side with his own constituents when the Republican-led Senate tried to take down Oregon's "Death with Dignity" Act, so we should probably become comfortable with - or at least learn to accept - the fact that we won't hear a peep out of him this time, either, even though a war supporter like him should be equally insisting on seeing a plan and a budget for bringing democracy to the Iraqi people...

At least we Oregonians have one Senator to be proud of...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:16 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Holding Our Breath on This Week's Corporate Give-Away 

...it's almost comforting, in a perverse way, that the Bush Monkeys still have the capacity to show us that they are not completely off their game. We've all gotten so wrapped up in common corruption and the Grand Iraqi Adventure that we tend to let some of the little games slip out of our sights, but with the EPA's new draft emission standards for big time producers of airborne toxins, it is clear that there is still a spark in Gee Dub and the boys. Had it not been for the fact that almost every regional office objected loudly to the proposal, or for the fact that somebody had the courage to leak what should be part of an open process to the outside world, we may have never been any the wiser to another raw give-away to major Republican polluters/contributors...

The basic facts are as simple as they are damning. Instead of requiring chemical plants or oil refineries to reduce their airborne pollutants to 5% of past levels (10 tons/year for single pollutants or 25 tons/year for multiple pollutants), the new rule would create a loophole the size of the ozone hole over the Antarctic that would free all such polluters to produce up to 24.9999 tons per year of air pollution, rendering virtually meaningless the underlying concepts of the existing regulation. Eight of the ten regional offices pointed out that the outcome would likely be an increase in toxic air pollutants and an almost unenforcable situation, but the most dire part of this whole story is that EPA has worked far harder to bury the proposed regulatory change and the dissention from the field than they have to actually, you know, try to redeem their responsibility to defend the environment. It's another clear example of a Bushco corporate gift, demonstrating that - even in the throes of a spectacular screaming dive into that dard nether regions of job approval previously visited by only the very few worst American presidents - Gee Dub and the boys are still on the job, delivering the real promises that most Americans couldn't or refused to hear way back in 1999. This gig is no different fundamentally from the sham of Cheney's energy policy or the oddly blind eye turned toward Enron's rape of West Coast states and electrical rate payers...

If nothing else, this proposed rule change by the Bushco leaders at EPA and the pushback by the career professionals at the working level of the agency shows that Gee Dub and his minions may be down, but they certainly aren't out...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:32 PM 0 comments

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Post-Spring Break Thoughts to Ponder 

...there really isn't any reason to take a 'beach book' to read if you are going to the beach with an early teenaged boy. The need to be constantly, frenetically in motion during all waking moments is paramount, since calm reflection or introspection are not weapons in the early teenage boy aresnal. There is only "GO" and it doesn't matter how brutally steep the trail is to get off of the high mount on which the motel is installed...


...vague promises of wireless connection based on the personal wireless setup of owner of the coastal motel/resort in which you are residing are best viewed in the same vein as promises getting a cut of vast Nigerian fortunes from some unsolicited email. If you want an internet connection at your vacation hideaway, get a room with a phone...

...nothing is more frustrating that being bereft of any sort of internet connection at the moment you discover Tim Russert on CNBC doing some sort of strange attack on Al Franken, apparently trying to prove that Democrats were culpable fellow travelers in this whole Iraq invasion mess. Shouting at the television, in the meantime scaring the children and making the folks next door pound angrily on the wall, is neither emotionally satisfying or a good way to make one of those satisfying human connections with others who have come to the ocean for to fulfill their own spiritual needs. It is almost best under these circumstances to buckle down, suck it up, and let the kids watch 'Dora the Explorer', even though you are pretty confident that they - as teenagers - are doing it just to piss you off as some sort of atavistic payback for not letting them watch Barney the Purple Dinosaur back in the day when they were firmly planted in that demographic...

...it isn't the best of all possible worlds to have to wrap up the spring break week with a side trip to the state National Geographic Society Geography Bee, given that your child was not only the unwilling winner of his middle school's contest but also was equally unwilling to be one of the top 100 state-level contestants to be invited to the finals. It was probably mostly a bad thing to be seen leaving the festivities at Western Oregon University in middle-of-nowhere Monmouth, Orygun, giggling and chortling about failing to make the final round while being surrounded by children who really wanted to successfully compete, and I'm not sure that any explanation about how we ended up being there and why - after five days in an extremely small but beach-side motel - we were more interested in getting home than we were in the unlikely chance that Diabetes Boy would take the big prize would have quieted the crowd in any event. We are proud of our son for what he accomplished, but we're not dumb enough to think that this deal matters all that much to either him or us when compared to actually doing well in school...

...when the sun is shining, go to the beach. When it's raining, go to the touristy-trappy sort of stuff. It's just that simple...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:32 PM 0 comments

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