<$BlogRSDURL$>

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

Friday, August 18, 2006

Being Wrong On a Tragic and Global Scale 

...the administration of George W. Bush has either demonstrably or probably been wrong in it's handling of the North Korean nuclear issue, the Iranian nuclear issue, the threat posed by Iraq, the development of coalitions in the War on Terra, and just about everything else when it comes to foreign policy. However, in the recent conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, it has been spectacularly wrong, and has done so in the very part of the globe where it has decided to invest so much of it's power and prestige in the effort to create that bold new neo-con world. Today, Gee Dub said that it is going to take time (funny how everything now is "going to take time" in the Bush White House) for the people of Lebanon to understand that Hezbollah was actually the big loser in the most recent battle...

Well, yeah, it is probably going to take time. It's probably going to take lots of time. More time than Gee Dub has left to discharge his Constitutionally-mandated duties...

The last desperate fall-back position for the Bush Monkeys in Iraq, after all that other WMD/War on Terra/"Saddam is a bad man" gig fell apart like a cheap cardboard box in a pelting rain, was the whole idea of bringing democracy to the Middle East. Lebanon was the exact example of what he was talking about, but it was in the early stages of gestation and desperately needed our help to keep the Shiite-centric Hezbollah bottled up so it couldn't become a major player. Our "help" amounted to stonewalling and gumming up the works on the international stage while Israeli warplanes, in a generally failed effort to "destroy" Hezbollah, bombed not only Shiite Lebanese Hezbollah supporters in Lebanon but also Lebanese Sunni Muslims and Lebanese Christians (neither of whom were previous Hezbollah supporters) in their homes, on their streets and - most dangerously - on the highways and bridges that led to some sort of safety outside of the bombing range that the Israeli Air Force made of the one country that you could point to as a growing democracy in the Middle East...

It's difficult to even measure what we have lost in this most recent Middle East conflict. The U.S. will probably always be the world's strongest supporter of Israel and that's fine, but the PNAC gang itself has predicated the survival of Israel on the development of more-or-less secular democracies in other Middle Eastern nations. It's becoming more clear every day that our dice-toss toward this end in Iraq is probably going to come up snake-eyes, and nothing less that a World War II mobilization of troops (including a draft) and conversion of productive capacity from the manufacture of big screen tv's and SUV's and MP3 players to smart bombs and tanks and armored personnel carriers and assault rifles will produce a military capable of keeping the cap on in Iraq while at the same time overthrowing the leadership in Syria and Iran. We had an opportunity in Lebanon and were actually acting like it's existence mattered, but we are now deep into the process of throwing that all away because A) the half-bright meat puppets in the White House were incapable of coming to the realization that those Lebanese not connected with Hezbollah just might be angrier at Israel for bombing them and killing them and plunging them back into a preindustrial lifestyle after all of their efforts to rebuild after their long and brutal civil war and 2) the only visible face of help and recovery available to the Lebanese people (aside from a few brave NGO's like Portland, Oregon's, own Mercy Corps) is...Hey, Guess Who? It could well be that somewhere way down the road the Lebanese people, in particular those Sunni's and Christians who aren't natural Hezbollah allies, may decide that all of their problems come from Hezbollah - that, after all, was a subsidiary outcome hoped for by both Israel and the Bush administration. Sadly, being only half-bright isn't only a characteristic of American Neoconservatives, and a whole hell of a bunch of Lebanese are going to remember who's airplanes bombed them and their roads and their bridges, they are going to remember who helped pay for all of those munitions that tore their country and their capital and their lives apart, and they will remember who was there to help when help really mattered. There is a loser in this most recent conflict, but it's not who Gee Dub would like to think it is...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:58 PM 0 comments

When I Was Your Age.... 

...as if we needed any more examples demonstrating that things just aren't exactly like they were when I was a kid, now we have this little episode to ponder...

Admittedly, there are some timeless elements at play here. The idea of teachers getting into a pissing match over some issue of little consequence was not invented in this particular Texan time and place. On the other hand, I never had a teacher throughout my seventeen years of primary, secondary, and post-secondary education that would have been a likely candidate to be found naked on the internets, if such a medium had existed. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the very idea is almost too horrible to contemplate...

This clearly is well beyond any of those valuable life stories that I'm able to share with my children in order to teach them values and sharpen their eyesight through all the eye-rolling exercised they routinely go through when I share some of my own valuable life stories. This just blows all of my stories of teachers staggering out of the Elks club at 2 A.M. completely out of the water. Clearly, I'm going to have to pick up my game...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:31 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Oregon Ballot Measures - Let's Get It Started 

...a quick review of the list of ballot measures that Oregonians will be facing this year, a sort of penance we serve in reparation for living in such a wonderful place, demonstrates that, once again, we will be faced with a healthy portion of the 10 approved measures that are little more than some small groups personal axe in need of grinding. Even though it isn't yet Labor Day (and all the rodeo's aren't over), but there are things out there in that ballot measure jungle that need to be confronted face to face, and Measure 45, the new term limits measure, is as good a place to start as any...

It isn't fair to lay all of the blame for the structural failure of the Oregon Legislature at the foot of the overturned 1992 term limits measure. It is fair, however, to say that the devolution of the Oregon Legislature can be traced in part back to the '92 ballot measure and the increasing partisanship that has become our daily bread. One of the little-discussed outcomes of term limits, aside from the loss of experienced leadership, was the increased importance of the activist segments of the parties in the selection of legislators, the increased importance of experienced staff and lobbyists in the legislative process, and the general failure to actually make the electoral process a real-live, honest-to-God people-driven exercise in democracy. We ended up not getting the sort of pure-bred true blue citizen legislators that the original ballot measure promised; instead we got the installation of party insiders from both ends of the spectrum who would rather engage in games of mutually assured destruction rather than actually solve problems of employment, health care, protection of the natural portion of our Oregon lifestyle, appropriate funding of fundamental programs like the Oregon State Police and public schools, and other issues...

A study by the National Conference of State Legislatures, while perhaps not an objective exercise given the group's title, found that term limits at the state level have not increased the performance or efficiency of state government. Oregon's experience prior to 2002 does nothing to argue against this reported result. Money becomes the determining factor in the selection process, and it isn't too bold a statement to say that this is a perfectly acceptable outcome for the outsiders that are the driving force behind ballot measures such as Measure 45. Money - and the proper party allegience - are the coin of the realm, and any noise about returning the power to the voter is little more than a cynical cheap game. Those national powers want you to play, but they don't really have any interest in what whether you understand just exactly what game you are playing. Suffice it to say that the driving force behind term limits isn't some altruistic desire to ultimately bring democracy to the people so much as it is a move to elevate unelected party leadership and the lobbying classes to a defacto leadership role in state government. Under these terms, it's not hard to figure out how to vote on Measure 45....
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:19 PM 0 comments

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Attacking Their Strengths, Ver. 2006.01 

...it's said that part of Karl Rove's overhyped genius is his ploy of attacking the strength of the opponent. A simple survey of the issues surrounding the 2006 elections would suggest that Democrats might have a little bit of trouble being able to employ such a tactic, given the reality that this election will be more a referendum on Republican stewardship of the government than about any local issues and -let's face it, folks - there just aren't a whole lot Republican strengths to attack. However, there is one hat that the Republicans are clearly going to hang their hat on again, and that is the War on Terra. This is a strength that can be attacked, and stories like this one are the reason why...

Now, you might say to me "but, Jack, the Congressional Republicans fought against that one themselves". That's true, but after I get through a wild panic-filled search in the closet and behind the door trying to figure out where the hell that voice came from, I will remind you what the whole back story was behind the campaign to unseat Max Cleland in his Georgia Senate race. The basic story line offered by Saxby Chambliss, another of the noted Republican deferment users when it came to anwering his country's call, was to cast the triple war amputee Cleland as being soft on national security, employing TV ads showing Cleland's face morphing into Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The strength of this argument was based on Democratic refusal to vote for legislation creating the Homeland Security Department, even though Cleland's objection (along with other Democrats) was to the aggressive effort of the Bush Administration to use this legislation (which the Bushies originally opposed) to gut Civil Service workplace protections for a large number of Federal employees. But...well, what the hell. Why dwell in the past, eh? It would be a more productive use of everyone's time to point out that - in the realm of actual national security - the Emperor is dangerously close to lacking an intact epidermis, much less having any clothes. This administration, abetted by this Republican-controlled Congress, has failed to provide anything more than lip service to security in our seaports, adjacent to our power plants or chemical plants, or even at our borders - well, unless the subject is illegal Mexicans, in which case we'll drag the National Guard out again to make sure those foul funny-talking brown-skinned people don't swarm across our borders and snap up all those hotel maid and farm labor jobs that Americans have been desperate to get their hands on. And now we find that, at the very moment when they know the subject of the moment in fighting the War on Terra is detection of a particular kind of bomb-making component, they decide to try to cut the money for that kind of research...

Bushco's end of the year report card on protection of the 'homeland' (Lord, how my skin crawls at the use of that word) is in and mom and dad aren't going to be happy. It consists of 1) an entirely righteous Afghan invasion that is now in danger of going sour because of our failed commitment to see it through to completion; 2) a generally unjustified invasion of Iraq that has suffered from incompetence and mismanagement from the outset that threatens to make the whole thing blow up in our face and render the thousands of dead and permanently scarred American troops, not to mention the tens of thousands of dead and maimed Iraqis - an ugly waste of precious human life; 3) a handful of wildly-trumpeted arrests of so-called terrorists on home soil that - on closer examination - turn out far too often to be either just simply wrong or little more than repeated viewings of "the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight". The Republican leadership has made it clear that they want to try to hold onto their Congressional majorities by going back to the tainted well of "National Security" one more time. This is their only strength, and it is ripe for attack, regardless of whether or not Republicans were involved in turning back Gee Dub's effort to reduce detection research funding. It's time for Democrats to 'bring it on', as Gee Dub would say, and talk constantly about the Republican failure in Iraq, the looming Republican failure in Afghanistan, and the Republican failure to properly fund security within our borders instead of trying to give every possibly tax break to rich Republican contributors. It doesn't hurt to yell "Jack Abramoff, Jack Abramoff, Jack Abramoff" once in a while, given the breathtaking speed with which the Party of Lincoln has managed to turn its majority status into a cesspool of corruption. But that's just a bonus; Democrats need to "attack the strength" because it isn't all that much of a strength and is ripe for the picking....
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:55 PM 0 comments

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