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

Saturday, September 30, 2006

Is Karl Paying These Guys? 

...times are tough for Repub's right now. They're not getting a lot of respect back home and far too many of them are finding that their constituents can't think of any really good reason to return them to office next January. After carving mightily on a fat hog over the last 12 years, they are faced with a wild-eyed pack of fiendishly grinning Democratic candidates that stand a pretty good chance of taking back the House of Representatives - if not the Senate - and who have pretty vivid memories (and a grudge to bear) about how Democrats were stripped of just about everything but parking spaces way out yonder in the far back lot when they took over. The Base is moribund and they need something to rally that base and get them back to the polls...

Why, oh why is it at this particular dark moment that al Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri decides to share his thoughts with the world? Nothing could be more likely to stir the fundo-fascist base to surge to the ballot box like the vision of the much despised second man to Osama bin Laden trash talkin' Gee Dub like they're out on some playground basketball court playing a little three-on-three. There are only two logical conclusions that can be drawn from this little stunt of al-Zawahri's: either al Qaida has arrived at the conclusion that George W. Bush and his administration are constitutionally incapable of conducting anything resembling an effective war against them - with Iraq being Exhibit A and Afghanistan being Exhibit B - and have decided to step up to the plate to do their part to keep the Repub's in power, or some of these al Qaida clowns must be Karl Rove's payroll, ready to speak out and rile folks up when the need arises. There just don't seem to be any other options that make any sense....
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:09 PM 0 comments

Losing the War on 'Terra' 

...while somebody may have gotten to the honchos at Newsweek to have an Anne Leibovitz cover for the US edition instead of the Afghani jihadist with the RPG that the rest of the world pulled out of their mailboxes (a little bit of newsstand message management if ever there was some), the article itself is still the lead story in the magazine. It is a grim story, indeed, if some of the other late-week waves of unsettling news and revelations are any measure. The word on Afghanistan is simple, even though it is getting very little attention on the nightly news: we are losing in Afghanistan, and we are losing for some of the very same or at least curiously similar reasons that we are inexorably stumbling toward disaster in Iraq: too few troops, too little commitment to post-conquest rebuilding, and too little money getting into the right hands to convince the locals that there is a better, brighter, more promising way than what the Taliban offered...

It didn't have to be this way, shouldn't have been this way, but whatever twisted wet dreams that the People for A New American Century nurtured about Saddam Hussein and their crackpot ideas about how to 'fix' the Middle East made it this way. The Taliban is strongly resurgent and pretty much owns half the country, the government in Kabul is losing its grip at an alarming rate - to the point that it has allowed independent war lords to rearm in hopes that their fighters will take on the Taliban in what is little more than a turf war over the opium trade, and the absurdly small NATO force is having no particular positive effect on the path down which this looming distaser is traveling...

It's cheap easy sport to lay this mess at the feet of Don Rumsfeld, but when the mess in Iraq is added in it becomes clear that this isn't just the failure of his own hubris. This is a systemic failure of the Bush Administration as a whole, a raw incapability and incompetence that merely is the highlight of an administration that has been a failure on so many levels that the next couple of generations of presidental historians and scholars will have long lucrative careers just trying to document and analyse each and every shortcoming. At the very least, Gee Dub's supposedly robust War on Terra is going to make people forget about his dad sending troops to Somalia or Reagan's commiting the Marines to Lebanon. He invaded Afghanistan with widespread support to avenge 9/11 and then turned his back on the country when it came time to build something that would replace the Taliban regime, only to lie himself into an attack on Iraq that has only created a jihidast generator where no such thing existed prior to our invasion. This administration has screwed up its own "WAR" by the numbers, and yet...

...and yet that is the very subject that they want to be the subject of the upcoming elections. You almost have to sit down to think about that one, just so you don't fall to the floor. The continuing war on terror: Afghanistan falling apart and Iraq threatening to set the Middle East aflame. That is what they want to run on, although the issues they are trying to raise are whether the Government can eavesdrop on your phone calls or continue to torture detainees. Had the Democratic leadership guts enough and spine, I suspect that the prosecution of the War on Terra would be an excellent subject to introduce into the midterm campaigns. Won't happen, though, and that's more the shame....
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:16 PM 0 comments

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Am I Crazy? Or Is It Everybody Else? 

...maybe it's all because of the secondary sinus and respiratory infections that I took from the cold my children gave me and expanded upon. Maybe it's the lack of sleep over the last week. Or maybe...just maybe...some of those wacked-out end-timers have something going on that I should really look into. Whatever the reason, it suddenly seemed today that an even cursory review of the news gave clear evidence that the world seems to have gone crazy. In just one day:

...the House of Representatives passed a bill gutting the provisions of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), giving this President - coupled, no doubt, with the inevitable signing statement that he interprets the law to allow him to do anything he damned well pleases - the authority to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails that are entirely within the borders of the U.S., which is way beyond the original subject of one side of a given conversation being on American soil. Repub's, of course, are touting this as a measure of Democrats' commitment to security, demonstrating that they have fully and finally kicked to the side of the road all of those libertarian sorts, once an important part of their base, who object on principle to the government having free rein to fork through their underware drawers...

...the U.S. Senate, not wanting to be left behind in ongoing Repub efforts to exert total control over the hearts and minds of the people, passed a bill approving the elimination of most of the first 10 amendments of the US Constitution for anyone, whether it is some sad sack Afghan farmer kidnapped by war lords looking to score a bounty from those silly Americans or some actual real live American citizen who made the mistake of insufficiently researching the Muslim charities to which he or she has been giving money. These people have been or will be disappeared; the one thing that will distinguish us from some South American banana junta is the fact that their headless, cigarette-burned, bullet-riddled bodies won't end up on some early morning boulevard as a warning to others. We may no longer be that bright shining beacon of freedom sitting at the top of the hill, but we are - if nothing else - a tidy people...

...George W. Bush his own self finally came out and directly said that anyone, like...oh, say...a Democrat, who doesn't agree with his carefully crafted Iraqi policy is simply a 'cut and run' terrorist appeaser. Of course, his policy is generally one of making sure that anybody who actually was stupid enough and insufficiently connected to play the National Guard game the way he did has multiple opportunities to have a Purple Heart pinned to the flag draping his or her casket as a result of wounds suffered during a third or fourth or fifth deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan, but never mind that. There's been a lot of chatter over the last several months by the left comparing the length of the Second World War to Gee Dub's Grand Iraqi Nation-Building Adventure. The stone cold lead pipe fact is that A) much of Iraq is still pretty much a combat zone for American troops and B) no American ground troops in either WW I or II spent much more than a year in combat, while some troops trapped in the Iraqi Express have already spent two 12-month tours and are scheduled for a third. Even more to the point, the Nitwit in Chief has laid down the gauntlet, clearly personally stating that disagreement with him is cowardice, a desire to "cut and run", even though some of those 'cut and runners' actually have been in combat and understand better than our AWOL president just exactly what we are asking of our troops. Being the combative sort myself, this little riff of Gee Dub's today sounds like taking the gloves off, and if Democrats had any sort of moxie at all they would feed his words to him on a silvery spoon...

...as the world seems to be collapsing around our very ears, House Repub's found time to make one of their major issues of the day the mess that Hewlett Packard has made of itself at the boardroom level. It's not a whit like Enron, despite all the Repub insistences to the contrary, but Repub's like my own committee chairman Greg Walden (R-Oregon) will fuss and fume and scrintch up their brows, declaiming all of those horror stories that don't make a damned bit of difference to pretty much 99.9 percent of the residents of this country...and which don't look anything like the forced increase in utility costs that folks out here on the Left Coast got hammered with back in the day five years ago when Enron was deciding to rape and pillage electrical utility customers...just because they could...

...and if that weren't enough, we've learned that the feud between Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera may well be at an end. Why we would need to know that this feud is over - in fact why we even needed to know that this feud actually existed - needs to be left for better minds to mull over, but this clearly is just another sign. Either I'm crazy....or everybody else is. Personally, I think it's you...

...but I won't tell anybody...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:58 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

The Next Chapter In The Coming Iranian War 

...it would almost be more comforting if the minions in the White House that are trying to goad us toward military conflict with Iran were at least somewhat clever about it. Such is not the case, sadly, and there doesn’t seem to be much of a chance that we are going to witness anything other than what we have come to understand after the runup to the invasion of Iraq as a connected series of ham-handed actions intended to scare us into thinking that Iranian sappers with nuclear dirty bombs strapped to their backs are going to be streaming down the streets of our major cities at any moment UNLESS WE ACT!!! For today’s half-witted installment, we have a report out of the Pentagon criticizing the Voice of America and Radio Farda for being “soft” on Iran’s ruling Islamic regime. Unfortunately, one of the problems with being 0 fer 2 in the creation of stable Middle Eastern democracies and, as a result, working off of approval ratings that would make Richard Nixon call you a stone cold loser tends to make representatives of other independent agencies somewhat less than intimidated by your presence:

“The author of this report is as qualified to write a report on programming to
Iran as I would be to write a report covering the operations of the 101st
Airborne Division.” Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, Chairman, Broadcast Board of Governors>


Shorter Ken Tomlinson: Bugger off, Rummy!

Aside from the rather disturbing continuation of this strange Nazi/fascist/Commie naming trend resulting in the creation of ‘the Iran Directorate’ - I mean, WTF! Do these people sleep with Robert Ludlum novels under their pillows? - it is pretty clear that there is a desired outcome - a GOAL, if you will - with regard to Iraq. Lt. Col Mark Ballesteros makes a statement that seems to have slid by general observers but must have set off Dive alarm klaxons like in those WWII submarine movies up and down the halls at Voice of America and Radio Farda. It would no doubt come as an ugly surprise in these high-rolling days of Rummy World, but any in-depth analysis of whether “these programs” are an effective use of taxpayers’ dollars is wholey a subsidiary function of the Congress of the United States. Col. Ballesteros and whoever shoved him onstage to make such a witless statement apparently are insufficiently aware of the function of the federal government to understand that it is not customary for federal agencies to make an analysis of the effectiveness of programs of other federal agencies. Fights ensue in parking lots over such matters, but that’s not really the point here. The point here is that, in big ways and little, Bushco is cranking up the full court press for military action against Iran, probably sooner rather than later, and mostly for reasons that have so little to do with American security that the most sophisticated scientific instruments would be able to detect them...

Out here on the east slope of the Oregon Cascade Mountains where I live, you can step outside at night and hear the freight trains rumbling and hooting on the main line from a great distance, especially on the sort of clear sub-freezing nights that we have been having recently. Iran is the same way; we don’t need Andy Card advising us about roll-out dates anymore. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt to prove it. Side stories like this are the same thing as stepping out on the front deck under a frosty star-blanket. You can hear it coming. You can almost feel it coming...

Posted by: Jack K. / 9:19 PM 0 comments

StoreWars 

...finally, after all these grueling years of wild speculation, an answer to the question "what if George Lucas had been a vegan back in 1977?"...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:21 AM 0 comments

Fred Phelps' Big Winning Day in Court 

...every once in a while, you run up against a situation where you find that, despite all of your personal inclinations to the contrary, the flat in-your-face fact about the freedoms about which we carry on is that sometimes they will rear up and bite your ass in the most unexpected manner. This Federal District Court decision out of Kentucky is an example. There is only cold comfort in observing that - usual winger vilification to the contrary - the ACLU is truly an equal-opportunity defender of free speech. More to the point, cries about liberal 'activist' judges are going to have to be muted in this case; U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell is a 2001 Bush appointee...

For all it's complexity, life still has some simple facts. Shouting "Fire" in a crowded theatre is not defensible as free speech, nor is openly speculating on the best way to kill the President. Intentionally attempting to incite a physical confrontation at an intensely personal event probably shouldn't be, either. What the Westboro Baptist Church gang does, with their aggressive efforts to make a bad time for grieving families even more horrible and ugly, is a special sort of evil that shouldn't be able to find a resting place even on the fringes of Christianity or in American culture, but those very freedoms we claim to cherish make it so and force us to operate within very narrow constraints if we are trying to protect people from particular obnoxious speech. So it's back to the drawing board for Kentucky - and perhaps several other states and local jurisdictions - to draw up more focused requirements for a funeral protest ban. It needs to be done, though; civil libertarian that I am, there is some speech that simply doesn't deserve unfettered protection...and the Phelps' gang is what it looks like...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:31 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Return of the Prodigal Blog 

...bring the fatted calf and kill it. Let us have a feast and celebrate, for Ruminate This has returned! Let there be singing, dancing, and flowing fountains of dangerous quantities of wine as we celebrate, watching with joy as Lisa returns to the electronic habitat skippy first called blogtopia to kick ass and take names...

Stop by and check out her new digs...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:50 AM 0 comments

Monday, September 25, 2006

Sunk Costs and Policy Failures 

...it was originally published several days ago, but this article by Swarthmore College Psychology Professor Barry Schwartz, which I just saw in my local newspaper's editorial section Sunday, should be slammed onto every political website, nailed up to every telephone pole, and stuck up on every bulletin board in the country. It addresses one of the core fallacies of the Bushco "stay the course" Iraq plan in a way that is brutally honest but that still shines a light on the path that leads to supporting our troops while opposing the failed policies that Gee Dub and his merry henchmen have employed in the Grand Iraqi Nation-Building Adventure...

We have been told over and over that we can only stay in Iraq, and by inference only adhere to Gee Dub's dubious "plan", because to do otherwise would be to break faith with those who have given that last full measure in the effort. Schwartz, while acknowledging that there may well be rational reasons for staying in Iraq, handles this one nicely:

But it is unacceptable to justify continued involvement in Iraq or any other conflict on the grounds that we "owe" it to those who have already fallen. That is a justification that has strong emotional appeal, but it is fallacious, and no one should be allowed to get away with it.

This isn't theoretical. This was a argument that was offered up frequently during our involvement in Vietnam, and several thousand older members of my generation died because of it. Whatever led to our failure in Vietnam - and I don't care to explore all the ramifications of that issue just now - the fundamental point remains that Schwartz is exactly right about the human cost of our involvement in Iraq. Reasons though there may be to remain or to leave, the cost in blood that we have already spent there is not an investment. We can still honor those we have lost by recogizing their willingness to do the duty to which their nation called them. They kept faith with their oath of service and gave their all for the mission to which they were assigned. As the professor points out, however, we can best keep faith with their sacrifice by making wise decisions about how to proceed, rather than by offering their sacrifice as a rationale for "staying the course"...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:23 PM 0 comments

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Agreements With The Wrong People 

...as I was saying before one of the most treasured joys of parenting - children bringing strange debilitating diseases home from school - rendered me horizontal for the last couple of days whimpering for chicken soup and powerful drugs, there are better things in the world than finding oneself agreeing, even fundamentally, with conservative pundits like Victor Davis Hanson. I find myself in that strange state today because of this article, and I’m not sure my strength is sufficiently recovered to cope with it completely, but there it is...

Hanson makes a point that a number of progressives are expressing both publicly and privately: While Washington has been burning, Democratic leadership has been fiddling...or fiddling around...or something. Labor Day has long since past, and - while there was every insistence that the Democrats would nationalize Congressional races to Make George The Issue - there seems to be little going on at a national level to make that happen. While you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone spouting all those comparisons to public discontent in 1994, there remains no national strategy to feed off of that discontent the way Republicans did in ‘94. There is no Democrat filling that “lead the charge” role of a Newt Gingrich or some rallying point like his ‘Contract With America’. Not that there could be, because that mold was probably secretly melted down in some iron smelter for reasons of National Security years ago, but the fact remains than this national strategy doesn’t have a national ramrod...

There is little with which to reach accord in the bulk of Hanson’s piece. Most of it contains the sorts of shaded misrepresentations from which Republican talking points are constructed. The strength of the economy and unemployment may very well be something of a Potemkin village; immigration reform is an issue that Republicans are going to screw up all by themselves because all the competing interests that are pulling them apart beyond any covalence that conservative demagoguery may have gained them in public polls; Afghanistan is becoming less about the war on terror and more about secular conflict, and the devolving situation in Iraq pretty much always has been; and then there’s today’s revelation of a National Intelligence Estimate of several months ago that reportedly says everything about the invasion of Iraq that some people have been saying about it since the fall of 2002. But yet...

Yeah, that’s it. The “But yet...”. But yet the Democratic leadership seems to be somehow skittish of the recent Republican successes in twisting their positions and morphing their faces into the villain of the day and smearing them with the word “liberal” like it was some sort of toxic mud. As a result, a profound sort of tentativeness seems to be guiding their steps. Only the wonks amongst us who watch all those Sunday punditry shows ever see them; they aren’t coming out of our drive time radios and they aren’t haranguing us from across our dinner plates on the evening news about the multiple failures of this current gang of thugs and fixers that has infected our White House and cheapened to the point of parody every good thing or right impulse or heart-felt attitude that this country has ever represented. In this one broad, fundamental sense, it is entirely possible to agree with Hanson that they are snoozing like Aesop’s hare...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:58 PM 0 comments

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