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

Friday, December 15, 2006

Do You Hear What I Hear? 

...that wild, piercing, keening noise you've been hearing is not the wind...well, at least not if you haven't been in the Pacific Northwest over the last day or so. More likely, that numbing sound has been assaulting your eardrums courtesy of the one last core group of George W. Bush supporters who have not completely abandoned him in this critical hour of need. Given that everybody else in the country has pretty much walked away from ol' Gee Dub over his hopelessly incompentent mismanagement of his own Grand Iraqi Nation-Building Adventure, he could always rely on laying on the God-talk to keep the religious right up tight with him. That unholy noise you heard a while ago was the outcome of their feeling the blade slipping between their ribs as ol' Gee Dub trotted out that old war-weary, meaningless, used-up claptrap of "compassionate conservatism" as he praised, in advance and without a shred of evidence to support such praise, the parenting skills of Big Dick Cheney's pregnant lesbian daughter Mary and her 'companion' Heather Poe...

This has always been one of the most interesting and confusing aspects of this Administration. The fixers and mechanics of Bushco have somehow been able to tiptoe the sharp narrow line between playing to the base and addressing the real life that thousands of families do every day. The Bushies, from Gee Dub on down, are faced with a particular conundrum because they have to play the margins between respect for the life of one's children and the dour, stringent demands of the base that call for little less than chasing the offending offspring through the streets of Washington with pitchforks, a long wooden rail, buckets of hot tar, and a good-sized bag of goose feathers. Most of us know how parents can suffer the sudden requirement to reassess their previous viewpoints when a daughter comes up pregnant or a son declares the sort of sexual orientation that will put Grandma off her feed for the next several months. Most of us don't know anybody who has to play this game out in the political arena, but we do have the opportunity to watch how Republicans wedded to the mumbo-jumbo of the Pharisee right feel they need to explain themselves to that closely-held and vital constituency...

The hypocrisy would be almost too much to bear, were it not for our past experience with this ugly little band of self-serving political clowns. George W. Bush has a more than ample history of supporting the idea of marriage - and the framework for childrearing - to be between a man and a woman, as well as the proposition that the only proper way to raise a child is to have a father in that child's life. Yet here we are, with all sorts of warm cuddly feelings toward the expectant mother, even though nothing about this situation fits with any aspect of the professed beliefs and policies of Bushco when it comes to child-bearing or child-rearing. On a good day you would like to hope that Mary Cheney's impending motherhood would be a turning point for conservatives on the whole subject of marriage/civil union/responsibility for children. This is George W. Bush we're talking about, though, so we know that all the pretty words won't be worth a damn when the caller-ID banner reads "James Dobsen" and deals need goin' down...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:48 PM 0 comments

Digging Out 

...I have lived my entire life in the Pacific Northwest, growing up in north-central Idaho and spending my adult life in south-west Washington, the Willamette Valley of western Oregon, the John Day country in eastern Oregon, and - over the last 10 years - south central Oregon on the eastern slopes of the Cascades. It's wonderful country in which to live because so much of it is high and wild and, except for the occasional volcano or uncontrolled wildfire, there isn't much inclination on the part of Mother Nature to sneak up and try to mess you up really bad with the tornados or hurricanes that other parts of the country have to deal with with such disturbing regularity. This winter, however, is beginning to approach the "enough is enough" line, with the nasty bouts of snow and ice, freezing rain, just straight torrential rain and - now - hurricane-force winds; I'm to the point of thinking "one more storm like this and I'm moving to the desert". Why we didn't lose our power (which is a big deal when your water supply comes from your own well) is a mystery explainable only by Providence; trees are down everywhere and "Do Not Cross" yellow tape laces back and forth across the street to isolate downed power lines into the weekender "little cabin in the woods" recreational property across the street. I find myself to be the owner of about eight fewer large live pine trees than I had yesterday on my two little acres of Heaven, but, still, I am a lucky man. One tree just kissed the front of the garage, putting some minor dents in the sheet metal of the front wall and the door without affecting the door's function, while another one just missed hitting the house and the family car by about 10 feet. I have some really cool pictures, but Blogger is being a cold-hearted bitch tonight, so never mind...

Farther out back, behind the garage, several more trees are down, including one that just missed the greenhouse and another that fell across the fence that my neighbor to the back slammed into the ground after the previous owner of my place jokingly told him that the new people moving in had six wild, ill-mannered preteen children with a fleet of all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes and too many roaming, unrestrained mongrel dogs to count (actual tally: two kids, one restrained dog, no motorized vehicles). The fence is somewhat the worse for wear, so the next little joy in my mundane life will be to find out if this adjacent land-owner understands the Code Of The West as it applies to fences: You Built It; You Fix It...

The Good News: next year's firewood requirements seem to be well taken care of. It's days like these that help to focus the mind on just how important control of the US Senate really is, y'know?
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:43 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

THESE Boots Are Made For Walking...Right Through Airport Security 

...Holden at First Draft brought us the story today about the advent of a new shoe-scanning technology that will be offered - initially - to the Registered Traveler Program where fat cats and frequent travelers can pay a hundred bucks to earn a "Get Out Of the TSA Security Line Free" card. This is, of course, the sort of insulting absurdity that goes goes with the territory as far as a Bush admininstration is concerned. I have an idea, though...

As it so happens, part of my "dress for success" business wardrobe includes various types of heavy leather boots. One of those types is particularly well suited for aiding the good people at TSA on their journey towards a new enlightenment regarding the application of available technologies for inspecting the traveling public's footwear, and I encourage all of you to rush right out and buy a pair. I'm confident that the sight of throngs of the unwashed masses - those poor souls who haven't forked over the $100 for rights to travel the express lane - lining up by the thousands in terminals all across this great country of ours facing the prospect of having to pull off these babies:

...will probably stimulate the TSA gang to consider liberalizing the availability of the new shoe-sniffer technology as the commercial air traffic system grinds quickly to a halt with delayed flights stacking up over delayed flights while passengers unlace and unlace and unlace and then lace and lace and lace...

...just a thought...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:02 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Dismantling Another Empire (Bonilla ver. 1.0) 

...with just the right sort of satisfyingly resounding crashing noise, another wall in the vast Republican palace that Tom Delay spent so much time, resources, and gall building in Texas came tumbling down tonight. Seven-term Republican Congressman Henry Bonilla has been defeated in the district that SCOTUS forced Texas to create to keep from diluting likely Democratic voters to the degree that Delay attempted with his push for his unusual second redistricting of the state, and one more formerly safe red seat in Congress has suddenly bloomed into a lovely shade of blue. It's been a disturbing last few days, what with watching Bushco try to drag every possible even-sorta-wannabe supporter of Gee Dub's Grand Iraqi Nation-Building Adventure as supposed "advisors" to create enough noise to blunt the common-sense recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and make space for some "decision" that will give George W. Bush the opportunity to try to get through the next two years as a Battlin' Wartime President. Tonight's result, gratifying as it is as a slap in Republicans faces for their black-hearted sordid little game over immigration issues, is another bit of counting coup against everything that Republicans have been telling us they beleived in over the last six years. It's one more opportunity to tell the souless fixers and mechanics in the White House that digging for ways to preserve W's "warrior president" legacy isn't worth any more dead American soldiers. Tonight's result makes the day just a bit more cheerful...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:16 PM 0 comments

Monday, December 11, 2006

"If Nominated I Will Not Run..." 

...so, "Will He" or "Won't He" must be becoming one of the most fascinating parlor games in Democratic power circles inside the Beltway. Al Gore has been the crazy uncle in the attic of Democratic presidential politics since the day he finally stood before the cameras back in December, 2000, and volunteered to end the madness of that presidential election. He chose to do so even though all the tote boards had ground to a halt showing him as being the undisputed leader in the popular vote and even though it was clear to anybody who had the guts to be honest about the circumstances that the Republicans were pulling out stops that most decent people didn't even realized existed in order to pull off the first victory of the second-place vote getter in U.S. presidential electoral history. Gore was misused, mangled, and basically beaten down by a main stream media that for some perverse reason was feeling its oats and decided to engage in an intentional slanting of news reporting because...well, it was simply great fun to pick on the Vice President and that George W. Bush fella was just a whole bunch bigger bag of giggles to hang with...

Time has passed, however; the psychic wounds have begun to heal and the issues over earth tones and beards seem finally to be something of the past. By turning away from the gut issues of the presidency and focusing instead on flogging his book and subsequent knock-out documentary about the environment, Gore has acquired for himself a certain throw-weight that is difficult for even the more star-studded single-named leaders of the current Democratic beauty pagent to overcome. Al Gore is once again a legitimate contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, and he has become so for the very reason that can engender such passion within progressive Democratic circles: he hasn't acted like he wants it. In an era when you can't swing a dead cat without hitting some current or former U.S. Senator behaving in every possible way as though he or she wants to be the next Democratic nominee, Gore is still out there. While ostensibly only shilling for an Oscar nomination for his documentary, all of his action still affords the American people - in particular Democratic primary voters - the opportunity to say "Y'know, ol' Al got screwed back yonder and he might actually do a damned good job". I mean, what do you have to compare to over the last 6 years anyway, eh?

I honestly don't know where I am with regard to a Gore run for president. The only comparison that can be readily drawn is with the comeback of former Vice-President Richard Nixon, and that isn't the sort of matchup that any Democratic campaign advisor worthy of his stripes is going to want to engender. The prospect of a Gore candidacy certainly has its own attraction, however, if only because he already had - before that "Earth in the Balance" thing - enough of a message that the majority of Americans thought back in 2000 that he should be the next President. The names "Hillary" and "Obama" are for the moment sugaring the lips of the MSM and they will - for a while, at least - bind themselves to most of the free oxygen in the room, but they will eventually suffer the growing pains that Senate membership and lack of actual administrative experience will offer. Al Gore, whether he is being coy or really means it, is the most attractive 'reluctant' presidential candidate that the Democrats have had to deal with in a very long time...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:34 PM 0 comments

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