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

Saturday, October 13, 2007

The Courage of Delayed Convictions 

...maybe it's just because I'm a bit grumpy, sitting here in a Sandy, Oregon, motel room early on a Saturday morning, because I'm up and awake and sitting here early on a Saturday morning in a Sandy, Oregon, motel room (although the high-speed internet is a nice change from my normal dial-up). Maybe it's because this sort of action getting to be a bit too much of a pattern for my taste. Whatever the case, it is becoming increasingly difficult to draw much of value from another former high-ranking Army officer rattling off grim predictions for the premeditated disaster we have become locked down with in Iraq...

I understand that the relationship between the Pentagon and the White House isn't one where a freely-flowing binary exchange of ideas and opinions is tolerated. Beyond that, even a casual glancing understanding of human nature can explain the disinclination of someone who spent thirty years climbing toward the top of his professional heap to throw it all away over disagreements about how things should be done or concerns about 'direction'. There is not, on the other hand, anything of value to be learned by a revelation three years after the fact that it was clear that the stink was piling up even then and that the "nightmare" will be ongoing...

Thanks, but I figured that one out myself. Beyond all that, lots of people figured out long before now without another insider's observations that the occupation of Iraq has been the sort of hash-up that has guaranteed that nobody will ever use the phrase 'the best and the brightest' even in parody about George W. Bush and his neocon handlers obsessed with their 21st century version of Manifest Destiny. Lots of folks who never put their boots on this bloody ground have come to the realization that there probably isn't going to be any good way out of Iraq. The confessions and observations after the fact by former military leaders about their reservations over this trainwreck will perhaps be of interest to historians trying to pick through the rubble to Make Sense Of It All and might even be a fine bit for some PBS documentary when Ken Burns is an old man, but right now they don'w explain anything, don't make anything OK, and aren't particularly redemptive in any case...

...and in this particular instance, none of that really gets at the heart of Abu Ghraib and its own impact on the fine mess we're in, now, does it?
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:16 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Rudy's Confused Sense of History 

...in tonight's most recent Republican debate, mercifully sequestered on cable news (MSNBC, to be exact), there were any number of absurd statements uttered from the mouths of the hopelessly inadequate aging white men who aspire to the powerful seat of government that other aging white men have allowed George W. Bush to carve out of the hide of the democratic form of governance that a better class of people conceived of and fought and died for to pass on to us. The most amusing, however, was Rudy Julie-Annie's insistence that he personally had taken on and defeated President Bill Clinton's attempt to use the line-item veto to...oh, I don't know...force America's children to learn that the mayor of New York wasn't actually "America's Mayor" or something....

Sadly, Rudy was wrong tonight, and he was wrong in almost more ways than your average American can list or possibly even understand. First of all, Rudy didn't personally defeat Bill Clinton's evil personal interest in exercising the Line Item veto. The City of New York was only one party to the suit, so it isn't true that Rudy was the personal victor in this battle (Idaho Potatoes forever, BaBeeee. If it's good enough for a license plate logo, it's good enough for you)...

Secondly, and one would think more importantly to the Republican Base, Rudy was wrong on the views of that Republican base. The Line-Item Veto was a Right-Wing Dream of the first order: The law that Rudy incorrectly claimed that he personally and solely challenged was one of the premier items of Newt Gingrich's Contract With America; Mad Tony Scalia was one of the dissenting Supreme Court Justices to the repudiation of the Line-Item Veto; John McCain was one of the Veto's strongest supporters...

Oddly enough, maybe this is a turning point in the once-comfortable saga of the Big-Tent Republican party. The Line-Item Veto is a cornerstone of traditional fiscally conservative Repubicanism; bragging about bringing that down is buckshot in the face of the people who actually brought Republican Congressional majorities and the absurd Clinton impeachment to your TV screen. For Rudy, though, it's All Clinton All The Time, because that's the only lame hook that he has, given that being boo'ed at Yankee Stadium last night by all those horribly ungrateful former constituents isn't the sort of thing that 'America's Mayor' can turn into some sort of positive moment...

The bottom line, if you believe Rudy (a tenuous prospect at best), is that he personally defeated the Democratic President of the United States over a policy decision that was actually passed by and espoused by leading Republicans. Rudy will probably get away with his duplicity today and tomorrow, but down the road this is going to leave a mark...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:24 PM 0 comments

"DINO's" vs. Red State Democrats 

...just up the road from me, over the last weekend, a bunch of Democrats got together in what could reasonably be considered a Home Of The Enemy in Sunriver, Oregon. Sunriver, a resort community nestled in the high, dry pine forests of Central Orygun, is the location of an array of homes that sell for eye-popping prices (when they are on the market), big-dollar condo’s, time-shares, recreation rental homes that you would kill close relatives if only that would put the deed in your pocket, PGA-quality golf courses, and ready access to all of the outdoor recreation opportunities - skiing, fishing, hunting, camping, hiking, white-water rafting, and all the rest - that have made this little piece of the state such a magnet for outsiders with pockets stuffed with cash and a taste for the good life in one of those Last Great Places. When George W. Bush came to town in 2003 to talk up his new Healthy Forest plan, he stayed the night at a private home in Sunriver. That says it all about the nature of the place...

The barbarians were inside the gates this weekend, however, and whatever checks and balances were installed to keep such a travesty from being laid on this locked-down Republican bastion failed utterly. Worst of all, this gathering of wild-eyed lefty hair-on-fire Democratic radicals featured as keynote speaker Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer(hat tip to Jenni at Blog For Oregon), who came to town preaching the power of taking on Repub’s at their own game on their own turf. There are lessons to be learned from Schweitzer and from other successful Democratic candidates for state-level office in states or portions of states normally thought of as Republican bastions. Those lessons, however, also contain caution signs that starry-eyed progressives occasionally lose track of that need to be continually kept in focus in order to avoid slipping over the edge into the Dark Side of Will Rodgers’ claim that - as a Democrat - he didn’t belong to any organized political party...

It is possible to be a successful Democratic candidate in rural western Red America, but that success involves espousing views that may not be comfortable to the progressive wing of the party. There are plenty of points of accord between Democratic candidates and the voters: personal freedom, care for the children, care for the land, educational opportunity, employment opportunity, and health care. Democrats have been saddled, however, with the burdens of “weak on national defense”, “shutting off logging and grazing”, “taking away our gun rights”, and “taxing and spending”. Successful Democrats in the Red areas of the map have been able to negate some of these issues, but that will occasionally result in Red-locale Democrats taking stands that don’t wash with the more progressive elements of the party. These elected officials are people who have made a tremendous emotional and financial investment to get to the place they are now, and human nature - not to mention the pure reality of the political beast - dictates that they are not going to be taking very many stances that do not reflect the beliefs of the constituent that sent them to the Big Show in the first place...

I have learned from a life of living in a Red part of the country that there are stark, simple facts: it may be possible to elect Democrats in many of these areas, but they will not look like the people who hang out on the lefty blogs. They will - to the progressive netroots - fetch themselves up on the DINO shoreline, somehow falling short when held up against the progressive measuring stick. Red State Democrats are comfortable with ideas like killing innocent furry woodland creatures with high-powered rifles, driving a pickup instead of a Prius, taking a measured, perhaps somewhat pre-extractive stance about natural resource management, and being somewhat less supportive of a full and immediate pullout from Iraq...

It comes with the territory. Out here in So-Called Red State America (a place of mind to which Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington and pretty much all of Idaho can certainly lay claim), the idea of even having a Democratic elected official is a fanciful whiskey dream. The further concept of Congressional Democratic majorities - even, still my beating heart, veto-proof majorities - can only be a hope nurtured by the hopelessly optimistic....UNLESS....unless those hopelessly optimistic folks understand that this is an achievable goal if only they are willing to cut the less liberal amongst them some slack to honor some less-than-progressive views of their constituents that allow them to get elected in the first place...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:10 PM 0 comments

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