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

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Where is Howard Dean? 

...it's a serious question. Really. Why isn't Howard Dean being packed around the countryside on the shoulders of jubulant Democrats? Why are we looking at the smug, washed-out visages of the likes of Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel taking all the bows for this remarkable Democratic success when it was Dean's 50-state strategy, to which they and so many others of the "Useless Hack" wing of the Democratic party stood in such strong opposition, that seems to have brought about so much of Tuesday night's remarkable victory. Howard Dean wanted to fund state Democratic organizations to compete in as many locations as possible, while the "Hack" gang wanted to pursue the hoary old failed 'targeted races' strategy of the past. There are going to be shiny new US Representatives taking their first oath of office in January that the waterheaded old school 'brain trust' didn't want to spend a dime on and in some cases actively opposed over more favored sons and daughters that they had annointed as the 'most suitable' candidate during the primary phase. Howard Dean is the reason many of them are there, not anybody from the House or Senate Democratic Campaign committees...

Maybe Dean got lucky. Maybe, just maybe, he caught the leading edge of that monster wave that this perfect electoral storm was destined to produce and got to ride it all the way to the beach by pure chance. Maybe his 50-state strategy looks like such a clever stroke because the American electorate was already reaching for the torches and pitchforks and would have run the bums out of town in any case. The real story is probably unknowable, so there isn't any reason to discount his strategy as being any less important than any other factor, but for mysterious reasons the good Doctor doesn't seem to be getting much cred in the MSM or punditry world - or, for that matter, by other Democratic leaders - for the role his strategy played in the fact that Democrats will be running Congress for the next two years. All in all, it is passably strange...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:14 PM 0 comments

I'm So Not Partying With These Guys 

...the story is simple and factual enough, but it misses one of the fundamental questions that good journalists should be asking: Why would someone even DO this in the first place? I lived in a fraternity in college. I have seen strange, twisted, drunken, drug-induced, demented, even totally mindless stunts, miscalculations, and really bad ideas, but even the sight of three drunk frat brothers riding a dumpster through the night down a narrow, steeply sloped Greek Row street between rows of parked cars doesn't...well... it just doesn't hold a candle to someone sticking a firecracker in a place God didn't intend for firecrackers to be stuck...

If this is the sort of news we have to deal with now that the election is over, I'm already starting to miss all those Republican attack ads...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:46 PM 0 comments

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Politics and the Unsurprising Guilty Verdict 

...there wasn't any tension or threat of surprise in the verdict at Saddam Hussein's trial for crimes against humanity concerning the slaughter of hundreds of Iraqi's after a failed assassination attempt. Hussein is a sordid, dirty little man who used death, torture, brutality, and intimidation to maintain his hold on power and the implementation of his verdict, in an otherwise perfect world, should receive little more notice than the treatment received in the pasts out west where I live by cattle rustlers and horse thieves. It won't, however, but it won't not so much for the sense of closure that his execution might bring to the segments of Iraqis who suffered under his rule as because of the symbolism that the Bush Administration so desperately seeks to ratify the clearly wrong-headed and woefully mismanaged decision to invade that country to take him down...

Hussein is a bad person and is probably one of the few people in the world who would qualify for the clearly-stated exemption to the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to execution under Pope John Paul II because of lack of rehabilitation, although that exception is apparently losing favor in the post-John Paul Vatican. On the other hand, he is a valuable case study for other brutal despots in terms of the value of connections with the United States. When you are useful to us, we will use you regardless of how many of your own citizens you gas or slaughter or boil in oil (plug in your own picture of Rummy cozying up to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War here); when your demise furthers our theoretical fantasies about importing Western-style democracy to the Middle East to stabilize those nations who provide our precious oil supplies, you are toast, babeeee....

From a simple human point of view, it's a shame that the Bush administration was so desperate for some little bit of November Surprise that it would hurry the Iraqi Court to get to its death penalty conviction prior to Nov. 7 so Gee Dub and his gang could milk a couple of good news cycles out it before the election...and make no mistake, this conviction announcement at this moment has little to do with Iraqi justice and everything to do with the mid-term elections in the United States. Of course Hussein is guilty, of this particular charge and of even more over which there isn't even need to have a trial. But one must never underestimate the calculation of George W. Bush's handlers and his own oft-demonstrated disregard for the lives of the accused. The actual verdict document doesn't even exist, a circumstance that would not be tolerated in any court in our particular democracy, and it won't exist until Thursday at best. The rush to create the image of Hussein on a gallows somewhere in Baghdad with a rope around his neck for American voters to carry with them to the polling booth is so overpowering for Bushco in their hour of desperation that they are willing to monkeywrench the image they have worked so hard to establish of an independent judicial system adhering to the rule of democratic law in order to get that verdict out on the street. The truly pathetic aspect of this little dog-and-pony show is that Bush's handlers don't fundamentally understand why we the people are growing so tired of Gee Dub's Grand Nation-Building Adventure in Iraq. It's not about stringin' Saddam up from the nearest sturdy tree; it's about the devolving security situation and the civil war that nobody in the White House or the Pentagon will admit is already being fought and the growing number of American troops being uselessly killed and maimed in IED attacks and the continual rotation of troops - especially National Guard and Reserve troops who never dreamed that they were signing up for something like this - into a dangerous maelstrom that seems to have no end that anyone in authority can pinpoint except to spout nonsense about "staying the course" or - when that fails - chatter about "benchmarks" that seem unlikely to ever be met. George W. Bush can personally feed Saddam Hussein into a wood chipper for all that it matters, because the reasons we have grown sick of his faileed little adventure have nothing to do with Hussein and everything to do with how Gee Dub hisownself has mismanaged the lives of our troops. He can have his little moment of glory now, strutting around figuratively holding Saddam Hussein's bloody scalp in his hand, but that hasn't been what our involvement in Iraq has been about for over a year. Hopefully that will be made clear to George and his handlers on Tuesday....
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:41 PM 0 comments

Cheney's Going Hunting....You've Been Warned 

...clearly nothing is beyond the reach of the Bush administration when it comes to trying to retain power in the face of a wave of voter discontent at November 7 approaches. We have now been told that Big Dick Cheney is going to take shotgun in shaky hand on election day and go 'hunting'. Now we are further told that he claims that he will be confining his hunting activities to South Dakota, but the risk of voter intimidation in any contested congressional district within a couple of hours' helicopter time of his supposed hunting retreat is obvious. This may well be a concerted and well-planned effort, with Republicans flooding decisive voting precincts with large balding men sporting a continual sneer wandering libraries, churches, and American Legion halls across the Midwest dressed in Realtree waterfowl camo and waving around expensive shotguns...

Don't let them succeed. Be strong. Get out and vote. Just leave that mallard duck sweatshirt at home. You can't be too careful...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:12 PM 0 comments

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