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

Friday, July 06, 2007

Bad News For The Decider And Big Dick 

...turns out that lots of folks could be Deciders if they had the chance. Lots and lots of them would decide, if they had the the chance, that George W. Bush should be convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors and hurled bodily from the comfortable confines of the White House. Even more of them would be more than happy to frog-hop Big Dick Cheney out of his current undisclosed location into a life of private sector leisure....

The facts that should provoke some degree of attention are thus: the number of Americans thinking that impeachment conviction for Gee Dub is far larger that the number of registered Democrats and - given the margin of error - leans at least in one direction very close to 50%. The more interesting factoid is that poll responders by a healthy 14% majority - the sort of majority that would be called a landslide in many elections - think that time in its fullness has found Richard Cheney wanting as a member of the Executive Branch of government...or whatever branch that he wants to claim that he inhabits...

This isn't going to matter all that much in the near term, because the Democratic majority in Congress knows that impeachment will only grind to a halt because there isn't any such thing as 17 Senate Republicans who will Do The Right Thing regarding a Gee Dub impeachment. Big Dick Cheney is a much more near thing, because even Congressional Republicans have a hang-up about their authority and can't possibly be happy about Big Dick slapping them in the face when the folks at home are getting restive about the way things are going. Had this been Al Gore bitch-slapping them back in the late '90's, CSPAN would have been "ALL IMPEACHMENT ALL THE TIME" for as long as it took to run him out of town...

Impeachment isn't coming anytime soon, unless some penchant for virgin sacrifice in what was once the basement bowling alley in the White House comes to light. But scales are falling off of eyes and a grim sort of reality is going to start settling in around the breather holes of the Bushco bunker. We won't be rid of the horrors inflicted upon us by MSM, the Republican party, and SCOTUS any time soon, but it is at least somewhat comforting to see opinion polls starting to indicate a realization of just how deep a hole we've been dug into over the last 6 1/2 years...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:47 PM 0 comments

So Much For That Hearts And Minds Thing 

...the United States has a really bad reputation around the world, especially in those countries that are considered the most urgent spots for warming the cockles of islamic hearts to the true-blue nature of our intentions. Killing innocent people of an islamic nature with little little apparent care or concern will do that. Bushco has tried, in the sort of lame ham-handed fashion that you would expect of people who are more interested in military domination than anything else, to try to fix the image problem we have, but unfortunately the very people who should be leading the charge to try to change the very real and very true perceptions of our offical national antipathy toward brown people who are followers of Islam has a real problem: they are trapped inside their embassies...

Forget about the abysmal failure that the Karen Hughes ambassadorial adventure has been. Molly Ivins might have been a good choice for a Texas woman to send out into the world to try to win Muslim hearts and minds; Karen Hughes...not so much. The bigger problem is that the professional Foreign Services professionals and those Ambassadors who actually came up through the ranks and not through the Republican Pioneers campaign contribution program are now trapped in such a tenuous position in far too many of the places in the world where they need to be doing the most good that they can't even safely travel much farther than down the hall to the bathroom...

The total abject failure of the Bush administration in its own ginned up War On Terra can be found right here. Our nation has created, through the unnecessary and disastrous invasion of Iraq, a virtually inexhaustible supply of people who hate us with a passion that modern science has yet to invent the technology to measure. At the same time, our nation - through the twisted band of neocon wingnuts who have hand a deathgrip on the levers of power - has created a circumstance where our people can't even safely walk around trying to show the locals that it isn't our intention to kill them for slim reasons. We don't have the means to "win hearts and minds" even when that would be a good place to start breaking down the hatreds that are directed against us. The legacy that all the lying and spying and torturing and killing that George W. Bush has brought us is going to be a grim one indeed, and the dangerous ground on which so many of our embassies and consulates sit is only the pointy end of a very large spear...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:04 PM 0 comments

Monday, July 02, 2007

Why The Chimp Gave Scooter A Pass... 

(...just a quick pass, what with the lateness of the hour and all...)

...because he could. That's the bottom line. 'Because he had to' is the corollary. While today's outrageous commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence has stirred up the progressive side of the political spectrum, the politics of the situation break a couple of ways for Gee Dub that make this action a no-brainer...

1) George W. Bush, for all the talk about a resolute calmness that Gee Dub supposedly has about how history will judge him, is clinging by his fingernails to the entire prospect of even finishing his term in office. There are over a dozen Republican Senators and a couple dozen Republican Representatives who's past loyalty to Gee Dub is starting to have a disturbing influence on their own ability to keep living that Congressional Good Life as opposed to having to go out and find real jobs. While Bush's approval ratings are approaching historic lows, the elemental faithful core base is still clinging to Bush, and they will be the people who will drag their sorry asses to the polls to vote in upcoming Republican primaries. It thus becomes important for Gee Dub to feed some raw meat to that remaining faithful base that has been clamoring for a full pardon, because that is the only game he has left to keep Congressional Republicans, who need those base voters, from shinnying down the closest available ratline to get as far away from the burning hulk of the Bush '43' presidency and opening up the possibility of brutally crushing Congressional oversight and more sad scenes of faithful Bushies being dragged off to the dungeons...or even impeachment of His Own Self for Abuse of Power...

2) Gee Dub isn't standing for reelection ever again unless he wants to make another run at Texas governor for the pure joyous rush of sending more death row inmates to the death chamber, so as long as he can keep 34 % of the Senate in line, he is home free on the impeachment front. He also gets a free pass in this particular circumstance because today's action falls within his authority as president. Ya may not like it, but all the verbage about "feeling remorseful" or "turning over a new leaf having acknowledged the sin" is all about recommendations; for all the talk about "contributing to obstruction of justice", the fact appears to be that a president has an almost unfettered right to commute or pardon, with only his/her own long view of history being a check on this power. There is a great deal of weight to the suggestion that keeping Scooter out of jail was vital to keeping him from suddenly having a shocking improvement of recall that would take Big Dick Cheney - and maybe even the Chimpinator himself - down the tubes, but that is trumped by the fact that nobody will ever know what the truth is if Scooter stays away from hard time and is moved to 'made man' status by the right sort of people. The sad bottom line is that today's action, barring some 'Deep Throat' of this generation and actual real live journalists willing to explore the blood trail (yeah, I know; fugedaboutit...), is sadly and unbelievably legal as a presidential action...

George W. Bush commuted Scooter Libby's sentence today because he could...and because he had to. It tightens up the base that incumbent Republican members of Congress need to have on their side in order to survive the primaries and at the same time seals the lips of the one convicted felon who could reveal that the entire White House is guilty of the sort of treason that the US Constitution actually talks about. As long as Congress avoids investigating the long list of actual impeachable offenses that this pack of cutthroats has actually committed, a little something like weathering a few days of bad pub over the Libby commutation is a small price to pay to stay in power...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:05 PM 0 comments

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Walking For Life 

...politics can be fun. That’s why I became fascinated with it 35 years ago. It can also be frustrating and anger-inducing. That’s why I started commenting on blogs and blogging early in 2002. On the other hand, there is real life...

...this next Friday night, more people than a casual visitor could imagine even lived in my little enclave in Central Oregon will come together at the high school football field/track for a 24-hour walking event called Relay For Life. Sponsored by the American Cancer Society, it is - all at one time - a fund-raiser, a celebration for those who have successfully fought the desease, and a tribute to those who have been lost to it. Mixed in amongst the little community of tents and sun-shelters that will, as in past years, spring up in the infield and around which local folks will walk for 24 hours will be members of the Lutheran Church congregation of which I am a member (OK, so actually I’m an elder). They will have a bulletin board up in their assigned camp area, as will many other groups. There will be pictures on that board, pictures of people who are still with us because of their so-far successful battles, and pictures of those who lost that fight. My father-in-law - still with us - will be on that board. My mother, who lost her fight with breast cancer when I was 19, will be up there, too...

There will be, over the next several months, any number of people who will reach out to us for money to help them win office or pass a ballot initiative. Almost every day, the argument will be made that this or that is the most important issue that we could possibly spend money on. It’s usually a lie, though, because political choices and how we feel about them run a sad, shallow second place to losing family and friends to cancer. Cancer has touched, or will touch, the lives of virtually every American, either personally or through our human connections, and the tradeoffs between political concerns and that aspect of real life are pretty easy to calculate. I would happily trade a 40-year Republican reign, for all the political horrors that it could offer, for the chance to introduce to my mother the wonderful woman I ended up marrying and the grandchildren that she never had a chance to meet, much less imagine...

Politics are (is?) important, because that’s what makes the big-picture part of the country run. There is nothing, however, that will blow political concerns right out the back of your brain faster than dealing with a loved one dying from a brutal incurable disease. Suddenly the composition of the Supreme Court becomes a secondary matter. If you have a chance to take part in a Relay For Life, take it. You will find a group of people from all political persuasions and all walks of life who - at least for 24 hours -couldn’t give a damn who owns the White House, Congress, or the courts. You will only find people who believe in Life. It can be a poignant but refreshing change...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:52 PM 0 comments

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