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

Thursday, August 16, 2007

A WTF Journalism Moment In the Utah Coal Mine Rescue 

...over thirty years ago, I wanted to be a journalist. I originally started college as a journalism major in 1973 and became after Nixon's departure another eager young disciple of the "All The President's Men" phenomenon. Changes of heart and circumstances led me in another direction, but I have always felt that tug. Tonight I turned on MSNBC at 9:00 pm (PDT) to watch Olbermann on "Countdown", only to find that there has been an accident at the Utah coal mine that has injured or killed some of the miners engaged in rescue operations, and I realized all over again how fortutious that decision from so long ago was...

Aside from all the the things that this means to families and the overall rescue operation, the most powerful emotion that I have from watching this drama unfold in cable TV news real time is a profound distaste bordering on hatred for the so-called "journalists" covering this story. Their behavior, especially that of Dan Abhrams and the blonde talking face on scene, is - or at least should be - an embarrassment to any person who is or would like to be an objective journalist (which a couple of decades ago was supposed to be the target). Their aggressive, obtuse questioning of people who are simply trying to provide available information in a rapidly changing situation, along with some pretty blatant indictments that ol' Dan is laying on right now on everybody involved and especially those in charge - all without any evidence other than their own uninformed but exceptionally telegenic opinions - really paints a brighter light on the ways that 'journalism' has gone off the rails than any dirty farking hippy complaint about the differential treatement of Democratic vs. Republican politics could ever do...

Tonight I shouted obscenities at my TV for which it will take days to apologize. If I were the PIO of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, there would be one less perky aggressive blonde reporter on the tube - at least until her facial bruises healed. This has been the sort of coverage that has driven the whole concept of journalism to such a low point that sales associates in polyester pants with white belts on used car lots across the country can sweep their hands through their greasy hair and stand a bit taller because of the sure knowledge that there is at least one profession above which they are viewed...

Thank God I decided not to go into journalism...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:48 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Oopsie!!! 

...I'm no political genius, but I'm thinking that if I decided to award a contract to an outside group to peer review my management plan for the recovery of the northern spotted owl, I would try to make sure that either my plan could pass muster or that my contract reviewer knew what the score was, if you know what I mean. Apparently the Bush administration, incapable of competence at much of anything beyond spin and dirty political tricks, couldn't come up with a way to do either...

I'm would normally be cynical enough to believe that this could be some clever ruse to derail a lawsuit settlement with the American Forest Resource Council, but that entire idea runs counter to the ample evidence of the Bush administration's approach to environmental protection since it moved into the White House. To be honest, the settlement itself sounded more like Bushco than any sort of clever machinations that this failed peer review might suggest...

The federal government has plenty of biologists and other specialists perfectly capable of designing a plan that properly addresses the recovery of populations of threatened or endangered species. Unfortunately, the federal government is also currently run by a gang of politicians who don't necessarily see that as their mission. It's hard to imagine what possessed them to actually go outside to actual real-live subject experts for a peer review, unlike the clever finesse job they did with the National Academy of Sciences review of the Klamath Basin irrigation situation back in 2002. Apparently they are a bit off their feed these days. In any case, this is an amazing self-infliced black eye for Gee Dub and the gang...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:38 PM 0 comments

Hopelessly Oblivious And Darned Proud Of It 

...you have to hand it to the beleaguered survivors standing bravely amongst the smoldering wreckage of George W. Bush's failed presidency. Even though Karl Rove is hustling for the last open exit, they still see governing as more of a campaign exercise than actually doing the will of the people. It is therefore perfecty understandable that perky little Dana Perino would rise to the bait like she did today in Crawford to assail Hillary Clinton's new Iowa ad that itself attacks the effects of the Bush administration on us little people...

Times are going to be hard and hectic for Bushco over the next sixteen or so months if it is nurturing plans to make responses to every critical ad offered by leading Democratic presidential candidates. Ol' George may not read the polls, but you can bet that his henchmen do, and they - one would dearly, fervently hope - should be able to clearly understand by now that substantial public distaste for George W. Bush's war of choice in Iraq, his mismanagement of governance as a whole, and the overwhelming feeling that the country is headed in the wrong direction are going to make the 2008 presidential campaign about him and those of his party who want to replace him. No matter how they might choose to distance themselves fromt the man himself, the Republican candidates most likely to win the nomination are going to sound a whole lot like Bush on matters of war, taxation, personal rights, and all the major political and social issues. Regardless of who the Democratic nominee is, painting the Republican as 'more of the same' is going to be the most popular game in town and eager young campaign aides will be laughing like gibbons and flinging empty pizza boxes playfully at each other as they build longer and more elaborate late-night lists of how another Republican adminisration will build on what Gee Dub has wrought...

The next election isn't going to be about the "O", it's going to be about the "G" and the "W" and the "B", and perky little Dana and all the other spin managers in the White House press office might as well strap in for the ride. They probably won't, though, because a cartel that has spent all its time working at the edges of "the message" trying to bend shapes and shadows to their purposes rather than actually doing something that would benefit those American people who aren't in the upper 10 percent aren't capable of finding some new groove this late in the game...

Clinton's Iowa ad clearly caught the Gee Dub spin machine right between the eyes. Judging from pert little Dana's uncontrollable desire to try to lash back and duck behind the worn out old mantra of "support the troops" for cover shows that they felt it. It's an odd sort of response for minions of an administration that not all that long ago extended in-country combat zone tours to 15 months, which is longer than any soldier who survived the sprint across Omaha Beach and managed to make it all the way to Germany's surrender in 1945, but it's no longer surprising. The spinmeister gang had better stock up on lantern wicks and lamp oil, though, if they plan on keeping on with this response strategy because they are going to be spending a lot of long nights between now and the first Tuesday in November of 2008...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:50 PM 0 comments

Sunday, August 12, 2007

A Contrarian View To Ditching Bushco 

...my local newspaper, the Bend (Oregon) Bulletin, is by nature and tradition editorially conservative by ownership temperment and local tradition, but it’s Sunday Opinion section sort of tries to play it down the middle with its distribution of syndicated columns. There is always...always...the waste of perfectly good trees offered by Victor David Hanson, who continually proves that the elitism of certain “elite” institutions of higher learning is more about class politics than merit. Ellen Goodman is usually there to represent “the left”, and then there will be another of each left and right to achieve what the editorial page editors view as “balance. Today, starting for “the left”, we have Robert Dallek, author of “Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power” with an interesting proposal for a Constitutional amendment providing for the recall of the President and Vice President, even though the original article appeared in the WAPO a week ago. The idea is intriguing and most certainly sounds like the perfect solution for his documentation of the circumstances in which we find ourselves with this current administration, but there are some big issues and problems that argue against it...

Issue The First: there is an ongoing undercurrent of debate going on all across the country regarding the use and misuse of the recall process at various levels. While it can be reasonably argued that removal of a public official who is no longer representing the will of the people is a legitimate use of the recall, it also can be reasonably argued that there is already a process in place to remove officials who don’t represent the will of the people. It is called the election process, and unless there are actually dire consequences to leaving a particular official in place or evidence of illegal behavior, that process has generally stood us in good stead for the better part of 23 decades and uncountable thousands of unpopular public executives...

Issue The Second: changing administrations - and, most likely, by inference - the party in charge of the
White House creates huge problems of legitimacy for the House Speaker who moves in. A threshold of only 60 percent in both houses of Congress and a simple majority vote by the electorate creates the possibility that a good election run by either party and skilled use of the media could create circumstances where a change in the White House and a change of party resulting from the recall of the current executive branch is little more than a carefully engineered palace coup. There is without doubt the possibility that the recall of California governor Gray Davis on the heels of ENRON’s rape/murder of West Coast - ably abetted by the Bush administration and skillfully exploited by California Republicans - represents just exactly that sort of scenario...

Problem The Third: why the Speaker of the House? If we are going to go through the effort to engage in the recall process, why not have a corresponding election process to select the new President, just like other recall’s require? Using the established line of succession doesn’t necessarily make any sense, because there isn’t any particular reason to have confidence that the Speaker, who was elected by the majority of one of 435 Congressional districts, is by definition the best person to step into the job in the middle of the sort of turmoil that the recall of the current administration would represent. As represented, the successor to the Presidency could have been, after Al Gore won the 2000 election, of either Tom Delay or Denny Hastert as the new president after the Main Stream Media and Congressional Republicans destroyed every one of President Gore’s initiatives and beat him down as a failed, do-nothing president in the first couple of years of his first term. Somehow I don’t see this as a logical fix....

Problem/Issue The Fourth: this is probably not a good time to be even talking about this subject. While the current administration is mired deservedly in the ‘Nixon Just Before Resignation’ range of public opinion, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that it wasn’t the invasion of Iraq or that whole “ripping up the Constitution” thing that turned public opinion against Bushco but was instead it’s ham-handed mismanagement of the Iraq invasion and a general ill feeling about the way things are going. The Bad Times may seem like the perfect opportunity to stimulate discussion about a change in the manner in which the Constitution manages the terms of office-holding, but that’s probably not really the case. The best long-term decisions are not made in a moment of crisis, but are rather made in better times when crisis is not an attending pressure...

Problem/Issue the Fifth: why just devote attention to the president and vice president? Why can’t we have the right to recall our Members of Congress? While there is a certain ‘good for the goose, good for the gander’ feeling about this particular argument, the bottom line offers an even stronger argument for offering the recall process for members of Congress than for the president and vice president. The inherent taste for corruption that Republicans so quickly fell prey to in their short stay in congressional power (not that Democrats haven’t been subject to the same urges, but it took them long years to get almost by accident and hubris to the same place and they never actually employed the same cold, clear intention that the current gang of Republicans have displayed) has led to scenes of Honorable Members of Congress being forced - finally - to resign as a result of the shame delivered upon them by their documented behavior rather than by any outrage expressed by their constituent. It is only their fellow members who can force them out of office. Why should they have that cushion when an administration doesn’t?

Problem The Next (and this is related to Issue The Second): when is the trigger pulled? Low popularity over some undefined period of time seems like a pretty low hurdle for holding a recall election. The FDR reference is instructive because it suggests the possibility that one of this country’s greatest presidents would have been recalled out of office long before World War II began, and the LBJ reference is also misguided because Nixon came into office still trying to win that conflict his own self and only was driven away from continued US involvement in Vietnam by a Congress that finally, at long last, acknowledged the will of the people five years after his first election and pulled funding....

Finding some way to respond to utterly failed administrations such as the one we are saddled with now is an attractive proposition. There are some better ways than the recall process to get it done, however. Those better ways require a degree of courage that has yet to be demonstrated by the current Democratic congressional majorities, and they require a sterner handling of Main Stream Media than Democrats have been willing to display in order to demonstrate that there are consequences to trying to be king-makers rather than independent presenters of the facts. Until we arrive on that particular blessed shore, all the talk in the world about implementing a national recall process is just wasted breath...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:40 PM 0 comments

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