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

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Why Greg Walden (and YOUR Republican Representative) Has to Go 

...far too many outrages are being lost in the ongoing Congressional battles over detainees and torture, which is to all appearances the intent of the Republicans in charge. They have to be calculating this right down to the bone, because they have to know that the libertarian wing of their party isn't going to be pleased at all to find out that the Republican House has voted to institute National Identification Cards for anyone who wants to exercise the voting franchise by 2010. While this is a mostly political gesture to show their rock-ribbed defense of our nation's border from a massive wave of terrorist hotel maids and farm laborers without having to do the hard work of actually making our country safer, it does offer the heartwarming prospect of unintended consequences coming home to roost in the trees closest to the house. This is where Oregon Republican Congressman Walden and his cohorts come into play...

The bottom line to this legislation is that everybody - you, me, Grandma, and that 80-something Central Oregon rancher - has to find a way to lay hands on documents that will provide sufficient proof to allow us to get this National Identification Card. Out here in the hinterlands, folks don't spent a lot of time worrying about qualifying as voters, mostly because many of us have been voting for 40 or 50 or 60 years and can't think of a reason why we shouldn't keep voting. The Republican legacy is one of not telling folks things, and this legislation offers the perfect opportunity to get more of the same thing. As a result, there's gonna be lots of folks who - for one reason or another - didn't get the message and will descover that they no longer have the right to vote because they didn't know that they had to get their hands on one of those National Identity Cards (or they refused to do so). It's as simple as a rising sun; the party that won't be honest with the American people about the Medicare drug plan donut hole isn't going to be any more forthcoming about the fact that they really are uncomfortable with the wrong sort of people being allowed to vote. The joke is on us, though, because part of that 'uncomfortable' group includes any native-born American who - because of poor record-keeping from decades ago - can't produce the proper documents to actually prove citizenship to their satisfaction. Oregon Congressman Greg Walden and others of his party have voted to add tremendous complication to the lives of older Americans who may not be able to readily lay their hands on documentary evidence that they are - in fact - Americans. When it comes to consideration of the wisdom of continuing to have Representatives like Walden, who seldom votes to the advantage of his constituents, be the representatives of a given district, this is really all you need to know...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:33 PM 0 comments

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Tell Me Something I Don't Know 

...the occasional stories have been kicking around for a couple of years about the failings of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, sordid little tales about how all those Americans sent to Baghdad to rebuild that shining beacon of democracy that would transform the Middle East were generally rank losers with few qualifications other than some twisted sort of idealogical purity and an almost Baathist-like allegience to Gee Dub and the Bushies. They have been mostly "inside baseball" tales, the sorts of thing that the average American would be unlikely to stumble across in a casual scan of the headlines. This report brings it all together, demonstrating the tragic fact that - aside from a lack of any plan to establish security in Iraq - there wasn't any sort of plan to actually restore the civil infrastructure...

The bottom line is simple and would make for great television commercials over the next couple of months of somebody had the guts and wherewithal to make it happen: The Bush administration failed, spectacularly, completely, and by the numbers. A country that was mostly a thorn in neocon sides because of the perceived weakness of George H. W. Bush in "finishing the job" the first time, but that wasn't actually much of a threat to the stability of the Middle East has become the tinder for a potential conflagration that could sweep the entire Middle East, and it's all our fault. We are less safe, peace in the Middle East is a rapidly dwindling prospect, the people of Iraq are trapped in a primitive hell that they never could have imagined, and it's all because of the bellicose compensation of George W. Bush and those who have his ear because of their twisted ideals, meatheaded theories, and failure to measure up as men when it was their turn to do so. At least now, in one place, the American people can see how part of that big picture the White House has continually prattled on about actually worked...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:57 PM 0 comments

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