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

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Papers, Please 

...today's revelation of the abuses of National Security Letters by the FBI is missing one important element to make the whole story come home...

What's lacking here is a tall, thin scar-faced fellow, outfitted in a dark leather duster and some strange tall-crowned hat with lots of lightning bolts and eagles on it, looking at you with those cruel icy blue eyes as he demands your identification documents in a strong war-movie German accent . The idea that someone can shovel his way deep into your personal affairs - down to the level of what friggin' video's you rent from the place down the street or what books you check out of the library (hasn't anybody heard about the internet around here?) without any sort of oversight is simply astounding to anyone who understands what the American idea of 'freedom' is all about. When we ponder the contributions of the Ashcroft-era Justice Department, what with that stirring story of the dramatic hospital room confrontation over the NSA spying program, we should never forget this contribution of Mr. "Let the Eagle Soar" to our national sense of personal freedom...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:30 PM 0 comments

Scorched Earth and Desperate Republican Incumbents - Oregon Style 

...oh, Lord, but it has been a long week or so, what with two separate graduation celebrations (12 grade and 8th grade, clearly a family planning mistake either in the late 80's or early 90's, but what's done is done, eh?), but the news - though not the posting - goes on. A tidbit that I discovered tonight, having battled my way online through the ugly evil forces that dial-up array against a remote-location intertubes user, is almost worthy of a belly laugh....

Gordon Smith is a United States Senator serving, after a fashion, the people of the Great State Of Oregon. He came to office from a stint as a relatively conservative state legislator from the generally more conservative eastern part of the state, and has been known since his elevation to federal office as "Eastern Oregon's Senator". While this generally hasn't been true, given that Gordo is often Absent Without Leave on any issue that actually matters to the generally small-town lower- and middle-income residents east of the Oregon Cascade Mountains, it has almost become axiomatic that you can set your calendar, if not your watch, by Smith's sudden change from a reliable Republican vote to Oregon's other Democratic Senator. He and his handlers understand as well as the rest of us that Oregon, once a proud supplier of socially moderate to liberal but fiscally conservative Republicans such as Tom McCall, Mark Hatfield, and Bob Packwood, has begun turning - if not a lovely sky blue - a deep royal purple. Even east of the Cascades, in once reliably conservative Central and Eastern Oregon, there has been a sufficient influx of people who want to move to these wide-open mountain and desert spaces to enjoy a rural outdoor lifestyle that the balance of power for any state-wide office has been shifting inexorably away from the wingnut conservatism that the State Republican party has come to represent...

Because of these concerns, the state Republican operation is feeling the pressure, knowing that Gordo's late conversion to Iraq war opponent isn't going to cover up all those other votes creating donut holes for Medicare recipients, a brutal piece of bankrupcy reform for people who are struggling as a result of the decline of natural resource-based economies in rural parts of the state, or his ineffectual efforts to convince the president of his own party to restore the federal Secure Rural School payments that offset the decline in "payment in lieu of taxes" money that declined over the years with the decline in federal timber harvest. As a result, we are seeing a strange and unsettling preemptive attack, staged by state Repub operatives, on people who are merely thinking about running as Democrats against Smith...

The 'old ways' that put Republicans into power at both the state and federal level are slipping away. They have lost control of both houses of the State legislature and can't win the governorship, even against an incumbent not held in universally high esteem by Oregon Democrats. What few moderates they installed in the state legislature are either siding far too often with Democrats on social issues or have switched parties. Their anti-tax agenda has nearly destroyed the school system from kindergarten to college and God be with you if you really need a State trooper quickly in an emergency situation. All they have is staunch opposition to gays, Mexicans and abortion, along with a scorched earth policy that engages in little more than defamation of anybody who is even hinted as a viable Democratic challenger to the rampant party rumor that the Beaver State actually has two US Senators. Seventeen months out from the actual act of a vote for United States Senator from Oregon, this action demonstrates the true desperation of the state and national Republican bigwigs as they try to fend off the massive trainwreck that they far too well understand they are facing...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:17 PM 0 comments

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