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

Friday, October 06, 2006

Now You See It, Now You Don't 

…profoundly cynical though I may be, sometimes I feel like I have to just go somewhere quiet and lie down for awhile when I run up against something that suggests that, just maybe, I’m not ready for the big time. This little tidbit trying to sneak by under the blaring “GAY PEDOPHILE CANNIBALS DEVOURING D.C. PAGES” headlines is one of those moments…

After months of having to listen to hosts of Congressional wingnuts prattle on about how the very core security of our country was at risk if we didn’t build hundreds of miles of state-of-the-art fencing along the Southern border to stem the otherwise unstoppable waves of terrorist farm laborers and Islamofascist hotel maids, NOW we find that this just simply isn’t true. It was just a soundbite, a clever little $1.2 billion soundbite for various winger Congress critters to throw out in front of their xenophobic base during an election year. It is a classic opportunistic case of having vs. eating that cake: They can brag to their anti-immigration constituents about all that fencing that they have bought and paid for, while at the same time being able to tell telling Mexico, various local authorities, and others opposed to such a stupid idea that it won’t really be all that bad because only a fraction of the 700 miles will ever be constructed…

So forget about the “wall”. There isn’t going to be a “wall”, even though you are going to hear several Repub’s carrying on about how they passed funding to build a “wall”. It’s just as well, anyway, because from China’s Ming Dynasty and Roman Emperor Hadrian through Nazi General Erwin Rommel on the French coast, history has shown that walls, whether they be of stone or concrete (or even 21st century hi-tech materials and technology) don’t do that good a job anyway…
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:14 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Cart Before the Horse, Eh? 

...everybody likes a good party. Victory parties are especially a really good time. Sometimes, though, the smooth idea is to be somewhat circumspect in the planning and execution of a party, especially a victory. My big splashy plans for a Super Bowl victory party with like-minded friends had all the promise of being the sort of epic blow-out of which old men describe to their male grandchildren when Mom's not around, and would have been, too, had not my Seahawks had the misfortunte of losing to the Steelers. It seems that some Repub's are in need of understanding that same grim lesson that was pounded into me: If you're gonna have a victory party, you gotta win first...

Gee Dub and his minions, along with most Congressional Repub's, have been declaring victory in Iraq and Afghanistan for a few years now. It's seriously doubtful that any of them believed that any more than the rest of us who weren't seeing things that way, but it did take some of the focus off of the fact that we actually really weren't winning at all. The revelation that somebody slipped 20 large into the Pentagon to pay the freight for a big fiscal year 2007 victory celebration, still and yet, comes as just a bit of a surprise. Most reasonable people would conclude that the planned reservation of $20 million for victory celebrations when Johnny and Jeany come marching home would somehow be paired with some sort of plan to...you know...actual secure a victory to celebrate. While quotes about on both sides of this absurd little appropriation, the day's favorite has to be CatMan Frist's spokesperson, Carolyn Weyforth:

“Republicans are confident we will be victorious in the ongoing war in terror, and we look forward to a time when those funds can be used to honor the men and women who have risked and given their lives.”


All well and good, dearie, but you might want to give your boss a call so we can get squared away on just what victory looks like:


"You need to bring (people who call themselves Taliban) into a more transparent type of government....and if that's accomplished, we'll be successful."

"Approaching counterinsurgency by winning hearts and minds will ultimately be the answer. Military versus insurgency one-to-one doesn't sound like it can be won. It sounds to me ... that the Taliban is everywhere."

Senate Majority Leader Bill "CatMan" Frist"

We aren't winning in Iraq right now and the prospects of doing anything that looks like winning between now and next Sept. 30, when this appropriation expires, don't look so good either. More specifically, with regard to CatMan's statements - regardless of the desperate spinning applied by his spinmeisters, we invaded Afghanistan to drive out the Taliban because of their support for Osama bin Laden and al Qaida. Americans died in that effort, you know, the one that was supposed to be the "good" war out of all the bellicose international belligerence that Gee Dub has foisted off on us. Letting the Taliban, or Taliban supporters, or someone who looks like the Taliban, into the Afghan government in order to "bring the peace" may not quite be on the level of turning Sudatenland over to Hitler, and Frist may not fit tidily into the mold from which Chamberlain was cast, but it sure as hell doesn't look anything like winning. I really doubt that much of anybody is going to want to pop much of that $20 million for that kind of "victory"...
Posted by: Jack K. / 1:21 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Just Sayin' 

...file this under "grumpy thoughts late in the evening after a hard day"...

...I have done what I consider to be the best I can. I have trashed Repub's at every opportunity at both this humble effort and at the old Ruminate This blog, as well in commentary at other sites. I have donated money to Democratic candidates and have written letters to editors of local papers. I have walked out as far on the edge of the precipice as the requirements of the Hatch Act allow me to go (still need keep a roof over the head and shoes on baby's feet, you know). I have stopped just short of offering to enter into affairs with gay Republican Congressmen, if it would help the cause, because A) Mrs. Jack K. seemed strongly opposed to the idea and, 2) I am wildly fond of women...especially the alluring and remarkably skilled Mrs. Jack K. (so, like, Tbogg thinks he's the only one who can play this game?) The Repub's are now in the sort of meltdown that we haven't seen in a majority party in my lifetime; things right now are far worse for them than the landscape that Democrats were facing in the infamous bloodbath of 1994. I don't say this from reading or research; I was older in 1994 than Kos or Atrios or a host of other prominent lefty bloggers are today. The rather simple point that I need to make before tumbling into bed, perchance to sleep, is that this is the time for the Democratic party to step up. Either capture at least one house of Congress or give it up; there will never be a better opportunity than exists right now to at least gain the majority in the House of Representatives. Step up to the plate and get it done, or - as Howard Fineman says - become the Whigs of the 21st century and drift off into anonymity. I'll just devote all my attention to football and Nextel Cup stock car racing...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:14 PM 0 comments

My Buddy Ron Saxton Sent Me a Post Card 

...Ron Saxton is a good friend of mine, although we've never met and I wasn't aware of our relationship. Judging from the volume of mail that I've been receiving from Ron, however, this failure of recognition appears to be my fault, no doubt the result of the heavy drinking that six years of federal Repub rule have engendered, but never mind that. The simple fact is that he sent me another post card today, and it's a doozy. Roughly the size of a small halibut, it lets me know that my friend Ron really thinks that I should think twice about voting for Ted Kulongoski for Oregon Governor, given the fact that - according to Ron - this Kulongoski character is going to find ways, if reelected as governor of Oregon, to tax my use of Oregon's air and water for subsistence purposes and, if at all possible, levy an income tax on the allowance that I pay to my children...

My good friend Ron, on the other hand, wants me to keep my hard-earned salary. He wants to become Oregon's next governor in order to hold the line on taxes, cut all the fraud and waste out of State Government, and eliminate non-essential government services. I gotta confess, this is a profoundly compelling argument. What with all the wasteful bureaucracy that Ted Kulongoski insists on keeping in place to keep an eye on the potential harmful practices, policies, and emissions of those corporate interests who have given my friend Ron the wherewithal to send me such a lavish postcard, there is clearly the opportunity to save taxpayers a whole wad of money. Some of my friend Ron's buddies have even come up with the proactive idea of eliminating the State Police and transferring most of their functions to the County Sheriffs. Clearly, Ron has a good idea about that taxes thing; in my friend Ron's world, we are going to need all that otherwise taxed money that we can get our mitts on. We're going to need it to buy the supplies to home-school our children as the underfunded and overwhelmed school system collapses under the weight of the unfunded "No Child Left Behind" mandate that Ron's other friend George W. Bush managed to foist off on us. We're going to need that money otherwise lost to wasteful state taxes to pay for the weaponry and munitions necessary to pay for our personal defense, since we aren't going to be dumb enough to accept tax reductions that eliminate the state police in exchange for higher local taxes to pay for the extra protection that the local Sheriff's Department if certain of Ron's other friends are successful in their efforts. After all, the only thing that Oregonians despise more than taxes is the lost of state services that matter to them. Hopefully we can all pull together behind my friend Ron to figure out which government functions are nonessential. I personnally think that all that snowplowing the Oregon Department of Transportation wastes money on every winter is non-essential; I own several four-wheel- and all-wheel-drive vehicles and have almost four decades of experience driving in really bad winter snow conditions; I don't need no stinkin' snowplows. And who needs a Dept. of Motor Vehicles office in every little dog-hole town just so people can license themselves and their vehicles conveniently; regionalize these babies with offices in Portland, Eugene, Medford, Pendleton, and Ontario. Your kid just turned 16 and needs to take the written and driver's test to get a license but you live in Central Oregon? Hey, make a shopping trip out of it, spend some money to support the economy. What's missing a couple of days of school and work? And so what if your neighbor is beating his preteen kids like rented mules out in the front yard almost every night? That Children and Family Services gang is a bunch of twisted commie family busters anyway...

Clearly my Friend Ron has something going on here. We spend too many taxpayer dollars fixing potholes (dodge 'em, ya dope) and fixing bridges and monitoring the behavior of companies that could harm us and taking care of the least well off among us. There are simply too many whiney ass titty babies among us who just have to pull their pants up, suck it up, and get on with life which, as my father and my friend Ron Saxton both would tell you, isn't supposed to be either fair or comfortable. Even though my parents believed - despite that basic rule - that their job was to make a better world for their children, and even though they expected that I would have the same goals for my children, My Friend Ron is a stone cold realist. He knows that we can't make a better world for our children, despite all the insistance from his decidedly Socialist opponent Ted Kulongoski, but can only succeed if we make the world safe for his corporate sponsors. They are also his friends and can be ours, if we let them...

It's always instructive to hear from my Friend Ron Saxton...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:04 PM 0 comments

Monday, October 02, 2006

On the Passing of Idaho's "Canned Salmon" Icon 

...Helen Chenoweth was nothing if not a true Idaho character. As a native, I can assuredly declare that Idaho is a state simply chock full of characters, one example possibly being state legislators who made Idaho the only state where - for the better part of a week - the use of radar and airplanes was forbidden to the State Police as a tool to track down speeders. That's a true story from the '70's; you just had to be there to understand this sort of thing. Although she spent some time in the northern part of the state, living in the same town that produced Cecil Andrus (a Clinton Secretary of Interior and one of the most liberal governers that the state has seen), the native liberal/libertarian leanings of northern Idaho never really rubbed off on her, and she eventually became one of the true believer freshman Republican members of Congress in the 1994 election. Her national claim to fame was most likely her objection to the idea of certain Idaho salmon runs being declared endangered, which had a profound effect on the commodity usage of federal land that makes up a significant portion of the state. Her memory will last at least through my generation for her insistence that it made no sense for salmon to be endangered when we could find canned salmon in our grocery stores (like I said, you had to be there)...

Although her service in Congress was relatively short, it wasn't uneventful. She was widely viewed by liberal critics as being aligned with militia movements, served as an insider supporter for the various "Sagebrush Rebellion" movements that attempted to push the argument that the federal goverment had no constitutional authority to manage federal land (no surprise, perhaps, that she married Wayne Hage, a Nevada rancher who was a leading proponent of this so-called "state's rights" movement), and became the most prominent figure to bring the whole "black helicopter" discussion into prominence. She didn't spend a great deal of time on the national stage, but her tour was certainly a formative experience. In an odd fashion, she was an entertaining interlude on the Idaho political scene, so her death in a car accident today should not pass without at least some acknowledgement...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:29 PM 0 comments

Sunday, October 01, 2006

The New World-Champeen Kings of Korruption 

...you really have to take your hat off to the Congressional and White House Repubs. In fact, they deserve more than that; I myself am considering dropping worshipfully to one knee in deference and maybe even building a small shrine in the bedroom in their honor. It's becoming clear that they deserve some special accolades, for they have taken the concept of that word "corruption" that they used as a pickaxe to take down the Democrats in the mid-'90's and twisted it around into previously unrecognizable shapes with a speed that would make one of those obnoxious balloon clowns at the county fair hang his head in shame. They make Dan Rostenkowski's House Post Office scandal look as sinister as parking in a higher-ranked member's parking spot...

In today's world, the Repub leadership of the Congress of the United States doesn't even seem to bat an eye at e-mail communication between a Member of The House of Representatives that most responsible parents out here in the wild west where I live would deem worthy of picking up a baseball bat and paying a visit on the Representative in question. Hastert and the boys have known for many months about Rep. Mark Foley's unsolicited e-mail communications with a 16-year-old male page, and yet they did nothing about it, either in terms of suggesting that he knock it off or having a little chat with the unmarried Congressman about the sorts of help that are available to unmarried middle-aged males who have an excessive penchant for trying to buddy up with male teenagers. I mean, for God's sake, how hard is this? I can't state it more clearly: If you, as an unmarried middle-aged white male, send my teenage son unsolicited e-mails including a request for a photo, the rising sun is going to find me on your door step with my faithful old Harmon Killebrew Louisville Slugger, a cannister or two of Big Shot pepper spray, and a firm insistence that you never cross the border into my state, much less communicate in any manner whatsoever with my kid. Middle-aged male Democrats may have their sex scandals, but at least they generally confine themselves to consenting women over the age of 21...

But that's just the salacious side of the overwhelming side of Repub corruption. We are all, especially those of us with a number of miles on the ol' odometer, used to the more garden variety sorts of misbehavior involving official acts in exchange for money. And with that we turn to our old friend Jack Abramoff, the gift that just seems to keep on giving. It's becoming apparent to even the most casual of observers that the White House claim of "Jack Who?" is pretty much like every other word that comes out of that particular bunker. In other words, their extensive denials of contacts with Jack are a lie. We find that Ken Mehlman had a quite...oh, shall we say, vibrant relationship with Abramoff. Favors were done; money exchanged hands. Mehlman even engineered the firing of an Interior Dept. official who opposed the efforts of Jack's Mariana Island clients to maintain sweat shop labor conditions in their clothing manufacturing plants. Abramoff is only the most visible canker of the kind of corruption that the Repub's have nurtured over such a short period of time. There is a largely untold story about the contracts issued by FEMA in the post-Katrina recovery period, and those stories are little different from the more well-known no-bid contracts that sent unimaginable sums of money to Iraq to no meaningful effect. The Medicare drug plan with it's sweetheart deal for Big Pharma and the parallel effort to stop the import of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada are just more of the same thing, as is bankruptcy reform and laws limiting tort claims in federal courts...

In the larger sense, the temptation is to turn around the very phrase the Repub's used in the mid-nineties back on them and call the current ineffective leadership a "do-nothing" Congress. That's not really true, though. They have done many things for Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Banking, and all the other biggie corporate interests who aren't in any way part of that more visible fundofascist religious base but are the folks that can write the big checks that actually matter when it comes to having the resources to get reelected. In barely more than one short decade, the Repub's have aspired to a level of corruption that all those short-sighted, small-thinking Democrats couldn't aspire to even after a run of over 40 years in the Congressional majority. We just have to honor that, somehow; it would be a travesty to fail to acknowledge those swift, powerful efforts to so totally corrupt the legislative process in such an open, uncaring fashion that the common man is left without words to explain what the hell has been going on...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:07 PM 0 comments

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