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

Saturday, August 12, 2006

You're Not Really Paranoid If Someone's Actually After You 

...call it an unfortunate collision between entrepeneurial spirit and a heightened awareness of terrorist threats. Call it a couple of young bucks finding a really hot deal on cell phones a really long way from home. Call it a simple tragic misunderstanding having way too much to do with a couple of Middle-Eastern men buying more cell phones than seems reasonable. Call it whatever you want. In fact, call it members of a terrorist cell vacumning up untrackable prepaid phones at a mind-numbing rate in order to keep the gang in touch for "The Big One". Whatever. The fact remains that, late at night when the dark side of the brain slips it leash and goes running wild into all of those gloomy evil places that we won't let ourselves visit when we're in control, you can find yourself turning over the facts of this story in ways that don't speak well to where we are as a country right now. There may be something going on out there, and we may well not know that it is because the government run by George W. Bush rejects at a bone-deep level the whole idea that law inforcement is at least as important as dropping laser-guided bombs on hovels in far-away places. While you couldn't turn around the other day without bumping into Michael Chertoff and Abu Al Gonzalez screeching into your face about the British bomb-plot takedown, the fact is that it was a British action and all the cozying up to the Brit's by various Bush lackeys couldn't paper over the fact that this was a British law enforcement operation...and it didn't require the bombing of a single Muslim wedding party...

It is entirely possible that the young men in question really were turning around $20 Tracfones for an 18 dollar profit. For the life of me, however, I can't even begin to understand who the target demographic for this particular sales pitch might be. These phones are for sale everywhere, for cash, without identification, at the same price; who is the moron who's going to buy one out of the back of a van for 38 bucks when there's a WalMart right around the corner that will sell it for 20 bucks, no questions asked. As a hardened cynic and a parent, I have heard and rejected far better arguments for actions that had potentially far less consequences than what could be going on here. But the fundamental problem is that it was a WalMart clerk and bystanders who - with no reason to do so on any average day - decided to say "that ain't right" and alert authorities. There isn't any heroic work by crack federal agents at work here, even though this episode has a more serious heft to it than the half-bright collection of losers and wanna-be's that have been rounded up in the past with full-blown press-conference coverage by the Bushies...and then there's Brandon Mayfield...

I watch the wrong movies and read the wrong thriller novels for all of this crap to be going down, and all that has left me bent in certain ways. This basic story just reeks of being the perfect first reel setup for some far more expansive plot involving evil men and dastardly plans that the hero would hopefully unravel and defeat in the nick of time. Unfortunately, Gee Dub isn't Harrison Ford, and nobody in his administration fits the hero bill either, and nothing they have done from the summer of 2001 to today instills any confidence whatsoever. So this cell phone story may turn out to be something innocent, but I sure wish to hell Pierce Brosnan was working somewhere in our government right now...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:08 PM 0 comments

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Ben Bows Out 

...and so, with one last little flourish, the quixotic effort by Bend's State Senator, Ben Westlund, to make an independent run at Oregon Governor is over. Actually, 'quixotic' is probably neither a fair or accurate assessment of his effort. Westlund was not some latter day Don Quixote de la Mancha (my favorite Broadway musical, by the way; I was Sancho Panza in my high school's production many, many years ago, but never mind that) on some personal quest; he was not an idealogue with some specific axes to grind like so many so-called third-party candidates - including pretty much all of the non-major candidates in this year's race. He is a former real-live bona fida moderate Republican, perhaps not the sort of fellow who is going to capture the fancy of conservative state-wide party activists in a primary, but certainly the sort of politician who could fit, with some trimming around the edges, into the mold of such notable Republicans as Tom McCall, Mark Hatfield, and Bob Packwood (at least before it became clear that boxed wine and the near proximity of women had such an affect on him), none of whom themselves could survive a primary campaign in the bitter, pinched up dark little place that the Oregon Republican party has become...

It really doesn't matter whether his withdrawal from the Oregon Governor's race is as a result of some high-minded respect for the process or the result of the simple cold calculation that he would probably get his ass kicked, spending a wad of money for no good reason other than bolstering the GDP, and give the governorship to amorphous shapeshifter Ron Saxton, the once-moderate member of the party that had for some time before Westlund left it painted a big ol' bullseye on his back because of his refusal to stay tightly in the winger fold. Whatever the calculation, the fact remains that he felt there were things he wanted to do that could only be done as governor and the polls have been making it perfectly clear that this just wasn't going to happen. It's a remarkable move, given the fact that we will be saddled with the rest of the third-party gang all the way down to election day. It is a remarkable display in this day that we live; while the parties fight over what the sour-grapes independent candidacy of Joe Lieberman really means, a man who stepped away from his party at the outset in an effort to become governor has decided that he won't simply stay in the race and create some undue influence on the outcome. Whatever the political calculations, that's something you just don't see every day...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:40 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Tom McCall Had It Wrong 

...or at least in this case he did when it comes to Ferrari's being driven by rich pricks who's bank accounts vastly exceed their humble driving skills, whether they are Oregonians or not. Ol' Tom was famous for his "Visit, but don't stay" riff back in the day, but with regard to these bozo's and Central Oregon, it doesn't apply. They don't even need to visit...

...There are enough challenges to driving in Central Oregon, especially around Santiam Pass, without having to deal with a bunch of clowns who have more money than brains and the means to address their issues of sexual inadequacy with a flashy Italian car. What with the deer, the elk, the motorhomes, the Californians - who apparently have no speed limits where they come from and are prohibited by law from observing the 'two-second rule', the tractor-trailer rigs, and everything else, we just don't need a gaggle of pinheads who fancy themselves Oregon's undiscovered answer to Michael Schumaker adding to the richness of the experience. In a just world, a few of them would collect a passing mule deer in the hood and we could leave the resulting smoking carnage sitting alongside the highway for a few days as a warning to the others, but - sadly - it is not a just world. Too harsh, you say? Perhaps, but they're probably Republicans, anyway...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:53 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Be THERE or Be Square - Lieberman Edition 

...ok, so I grew up in a different time - but so did Joe Lieberman. In that time, if you were a Democrat, you stayed a Democrat. The rules of life, especially here out west where there wasn't any such thing as ward politics or the typical concept of political 'machines', were pretty simple: You win the primary, you carry the party banner in the general election in November; You lose, you go home. We have seen all sorts of party switching both here in Oregon and at the national level over the years as public figures found that they had either moved ahead of or had been left behind by the party with which they had been affiliated over many years. The manner in which they have changed their affiliation has usually been upsetting to somebody, usually because that switch in affiliation came after an election. What we have seldom - well, probably never - seen is a defeated incumbent candidate switch political affiliations in an effort to retain an elected position, especially at the national level (there may be some examples out there somewhere, but I don't recall any; if you do, please feel free to e-mail me those examples, but please keep references to my ancestry and brainpower to a minimum, mmmkay?)...

The larger message that Lieberman is sending by insisting on running as an independent candidate is almost a staggering thing for a simple man like me to wrap his arms around. Today's vote is a statement by Connecticut Democrats about his representation of their concerns. To insist that he will run as an independent suggests little less than the fact that he had no particular feeling about the concerns of his Democratic constituents in any case. Either that or it suggests that Joe Lieberman can't sufficiently imagine a life outside of Congressional service that he can let go of a statement by the voting members of the party to which he claimed membership for the last few decades. This isn't in any respect similar to Central Oregon legislator Ben Westlund's move to the independent ranks for a run at being Oregon's governor; this is more like some perverse sort of sour grapes campaign hoping to capture that growing population of registered independents who are supposedly part of his base. The bottom line tonight, aside from any such calculation, is that Connecticut Democrats are looking in a new direction. Lieberman may want to explore other options to teach folks a lesson or try to keep his cushy job or whatever, but as far as that hoary old two-party system is concerned, the people that he supposedly represented have spoken. In that different time in which I grew up, what he suggests he's going to do is wrong; you need to be a Democrat or not be a Democrat from the get-go; be THERE or be square...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:53 PM 0 comments

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Low Expectations for Media Analyis - the Lieberman Edition 

...there are days when I read some of the half-bright hog-food that comes out of the national media attempting to pass itself off as thoughful political analysis and realize that I could do that job. It’s all a matter of the right break, being that kid pitching rotten tomatoes at the side of the barn who catches the eye of a passing big league pitching scout. Or maybe, in this era of moral decline, maybe it’s just a matter of manufacturing the right connections: Who do I have to sleep with to get one of these national pundit gigs (yes, examples do come to mind, but why go looking for trouble, eh?)? This is a perfect representation of just the sort of misguided "analysis" that I’m talking about...

Chris Dodd even tries to right this particular sinking boat:
"This is really about Bush," he said. "It's deeper than an antiwar thing."
...but to no avail. For far too many people who have become slaves to the Rovian idea of simple messages and attacks on strength, it’s all about Iraq in the Connecticut Democratic Senatorial primary, when that clearly isn't the case to anyone who has actually followed the storyline. It apparently isn’t possible to get through people’s heads that the issue, beyond Lieberman’s admittedly strident cheerleading of George Bush’s war, is his seemingly reliable position as Gee Dub’s man in the Democratic Senate Caucus. For a simple primer on why Joe Lieberman is facing big trouble in River City in this primary season, one need look no further than this particular Dkos diary that documents a host of issues that have nothing to do with Iraq. But, still, to the national media, it’s all about Lieberman’s support for Gee Dub’s Grand Nation-Building Adventure, a nice short message point that will somewhere down the road suit Republicans nicely. In some potential future, Republicans will yammer on endlessly about how progressive Democrats are ‘cut-and-run’ cowards gripped in some perverse desire to let the terrorists win. The fact that there are fundamental debate points about whether invading Iraq advanced the War on Terra (and larger issues about how Joe Lieberman represents the values of the Democratic party) will all be lost on the greater society that lets the media guide them on what to think rather than use the media as a tool to decide for themselves what is going on...

But that’s hard work; it’s even harder to gather all the threads together to put it into some semblance of ordered sentences in some little blog for a couple of people to read. And all that hard work doesn’t pay well...ok, so actually around here it doesn't pay at all, except to earn the lowly backyard pundit a few snarls from the spousal unit about spending all that time on the internet. So I would really like to have one of those big-salary national analysis-writing gigs or some mainline punditry post. I’d even pay for the "Just for Men" chemicals for my beard and remaining head-hair to give me that youthful look that the camera just eats up if I could just catch a gig on one of the Sunday talk shows or cable tv talkfests. I’m good to go and I. Could. Do. That. Job...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:11 PM 0 comments

The Painful Existentialism of the Dial-Up Life 

...blogging has been nonexistent recently, not because I don’t have anything to say, but because I have suddenly found myself incabable of getting an online dial-up connection (yes, that’s the life I lead) faster than about 19 Kbps, which is so slow that it is possible to complete significant home improvement projects while waiting for individual pages to load. Various experiments point toward some problem with the telephone lines, which means dealing with Qwest, which means that - by the time we are done with this - I may well not even have telephone service, much less an on-line connections. I’ve checked, and there isn’t any sort of IP address for smoke signals or mirror-flashing (which wouldn’t work anyway, since I normally do this gig in the evening, when mirror-signalling is particularly ineffective). I can’t do this at work because...

...well, because I have work to do at work, not to mention the fact that I don’t want to risk being beaten by roving gangs of burly IT technicians for being caught breaking computer use rules (OK, that ‘burly IT technicians’ thing is admittedly a stretch, but still, they have me seriously outnumbered). I must confess that there are days like this when I lapse into crazy dreams about actually living in some real-live incorporated community that has things like DSL or wireless Internet. But I don’t, and probably never will, so if I ever end up just walking away from this personal bit of self-serving internet spleen-venting, it will probably be because of something like this vexing, inexplicable loss of performance rather than a lack of interest or of things to say. As I gird my loins for the forthcoming brutal combat with the evil telephone minions, all I can ask is that you pray for me...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:03 PM 0 comments

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