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

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Ratifying What We Already Suspected In The Everlovin' Lying Green State 

...the Washington Supreme Court has finally validated the existence of the Faux News Network and all other political operatives today, not to mention the core strategy of the Republican party over the last twenty years. In a somewhat surprising split decision, the SCOTSOW found that intentionally lying by a political candidate about his or her opponent is not necessarily a violation of state law (and how quaint it is that some of the gentle souls occupying our upper left-hand corner of a U.S map would even consider having such a law to begin with), but is in fact protected speech...

In a strikingly libertarian decision, the majority said - in effect - that only the insistence that your electoral opponent has a history of engaging in casual sexual relations with family pets and barnyard animals is unprotected speech. Pretty much anything else can fall into the category of "informing the voters", even if it is patently false, and is therefore not an intentional example of defamatory speech....

This is going to make politcal campaigns, at least in the state of Washington, a fascinating display of protected political speech for some time to come. Despite all the complaints that we have heard over the last 20 years about the decline in political discourse, we now know - at least in Washington state - that any talk about your political opponent that doesn’t directly sink into chattering rumors about his or her behavior in some Minnesota restroom is a protected form of free speech. Intentionally misrepresenting the positions and views of your opponent in a non-defamoratory way(!!??!1!) is now protected free speech in The Evergreen State...

I blame Starbucks...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:24 PM 0 comments

My Ol' Buddy Larry Craig Takes A Stand 

...it’s been a "good news/bad news" day for my old friend Larry Craig. The Bad News was that the Mineapolis judge told him - or at least his lawyers, since The People’s Business kept him away from the court room - that his guilty plea on charges of Disturbing the Peace (Larry has big feet, so his toe tapping can understandably disrupt the contemplative peacefulness of an airport mens’ room) was made in good faith and during a fit of mental soundness, making it a valid plea that the judge would not rescind...

The Good News for Larry and all of his adoring constituents is that he has discovered that he is still able to function effectively as the Senior From The Great State Of Idaho, the land of my own birth; The Gem State; a place peopled by a population that believes in the golden promise of A Second Chance. Because of that epiphany, he has decided to serve out his term. A native-born son like me can’t help but feel anything but pride of place to see such a perfect example of the the sort of Idaho courage that my ol’ bud Larry is displaying at this moment, shrugging off the obvious fact that he stands accused of being a dirty, nasty, naughty boy in order to come together with his Republican friends in the Senate to redeem his responsibility to the will of the people of this great state....

Of course, that high keening sound that you may have thought you heard this afternoon needs to be ignored. It wasn’t a nearby pack of coyotes; that wouldn’t make any sense if you were in an urban setting in any case. No, that sound was the collective wailing of the Idaho Republican party and the Republican leadership in the Senate staring at the prospect of 16 more months of very public jokes revolving around the current occupant of a Republican-held US Senate seat that will come vacant in about 16 months in a state that already wishes the incumbent would go away but which will not be able to be filled with another Repub that could take the evil taste out of voters’ mouths...ok, sorry about that...and will create a contestable seat that should otherwise have been a safe hold for the Repub party...

Larry will probably find that all that effectiveness that he discerned was predicated mostly on the idea that he would be leaving sooner rather than later. Being a Real Man and an Idahoan, however, he is making the right call. He has decided to stand up for all those other people who have been smeared in the media, like David Vitter and combat fighter ace Duke Cunningham, and Do The Right Thing for the People of Idaho by continuing the mission...

I couldn’t be any more grateful to my old friend Larry for his courage....
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:18 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

RUN! RUN!@!!1! It's The Terrifying Hillary!@!!1$!! 

...it should have been obvious to all but the truly oblivious (sadly that may be a good percentage of the American public, if the long-term efforts of Republican spindoctors are any judge)long before now, but even the most tone-deaf news consumer should be coming to an understanding that there is only really one Democratic candidate that the hopeless band of losers who are vying for the Repub nomination really, really don't want to face. Hillary Clinton is a subject of attack by the silly little inadequate white men trying to grab the brass ring on the Repub side to a degree that you would only normally see - at least at this point in the undercard matches - if the target in question were the actual incumbent President seeking reelection...

There was a time a few election cycles ago when the Democratic candidates seeking the presidential nomination were referred to gleefully by Republican operatives - and far too often by the MSM - as "The Seven Dwarfs". George H. W. Bush was the clear presumptive Republican nominee, based on 8 years as Vice President, and even the travails of Congressional investigations into the Iran-Contra affair couldn't blunt his ability to defeat Michael Dukakis. This is a different rodeo, however, and there's a whole 'nother set of buckin' stock out back in the corrals behind the chutes. This time it's an entirely different landscape, since Big Dick Cheney is as likely to enter into NASA's "First Man On Mars" program as he is to run for the presidency. This time, it is the Democratic voters who are looking at the glint in an eye or the cut of a jib or some other amorphous anchor point to winnow down to the best candidate from a diverse host of attractive candidates, while it is a swarm of snaggle-toothed, hopeless-looking old Republican white men who are battling on their side of the line. Yet despite all the problems that the current crop of Repub candidates offer both to their base and to the general electorate, their blastfax theme of the day, week, and - perhaps - month seems to be "The Problems With Hillary"...

It creates, and actually may be intended to create, an interesting amount of discussion about only one of the Democratic candidates. Lord knows there are plenty of Dirty Farkin' Hippie Democrats who don't want to see Clinton as the nominee because of her mad DLC triangulation skills. Were I a Repub operative, I would certainly be interested in stirring up conflict in Democratic circles over whether Hillary was truly "lefty" enough to be the nominee, if only because the two most likely Repub candidates, Rudy Guiliani and Mitt Romney, have the sorts of issue conflicts with the fundy Republican base that would normally be a buzzkiller, John McCain is becoming a latter-day Harold Stassen, Fred Thompson is little more than a Foghorn Leghorn action figure imitation of a presidential candidate, and the rest of the right wing field are remarkably lucky that they ever got elected to any position at all and shouldn't really push their luck by taking their bizarre notions out for a nation-wide walk...

I have to confess that I'm not a big Hillary fan myself, but that is mostly because I would like to think that after the passage of 27 years we could have a presidential election that didn't have either the surnames "Bush" or "Clinton" somewhere at the top of the voter card ballot. That doesn't mean I wouldn't vote for her in a general election, nor does it mean that I wouldn't be as loud as possible in my opposition to whichever charlatan or wingnut who actually earns the Repub nomination. It is, however - but not surprisingly, notable that the only Democratic candidate that the Repub wannabe's are attacking is Hillary Clinton rather than somebody else that somebody like me might choose to vote for. They are making their declaration about which Democratic candidate scares them and their well-established social conservative base the most and are spending a lot of their time attacking her rather than trying to make a case for their own election or attacking any other Democratic candidate. They want us to be afraid...very afraid about the prospect of a President Hillary Clinton. For the life of me, I can't imagine why pretty large majorities of the American populace would actually find that to be a really scary proposition, given the abuse and nonsense that we have had to endure for the last nearly seven years...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:00 PM 0 comments

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