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

Friday, December 14, 2007

Burning Memories 

…in the late 1970’s I began my career as a working stiff in rural Southwestern Washington state, wandering the forests south and west of what would – not long after my arrival - become a much more famous Mt. St. Helens. On the route out to the woods, sitting at the corner of State Route 503 and Lewis River Road, sat Jack’s Restaurant and Store, which would become one of the landmarks of my near-decade of residence…

There wasn’t anything particularly special or flashy about Jack’s, just a little convenience/sporting goods store and restaurant. But that was where my boss and I would stop for the occasional coffee break on our way to or from the woods if it was the right time of day…or cold and rainy…or he was in special need of one of their monstrous cinnamon rolls. It was where a woman that I insist picked me up in a local bar (she claims a different recollection) and I stopped for breakfast. Later, after we married and set up house keeping in a little cabin in the woods a couple of miles away, it was where we would occasionally eat when nobody wanted to cook; after the bar was added in the mid-1980’s, it was where we hung out on Friday nights with friends and neighbors. In the late summer of 2000, it was where we sat with old friends at the 20th anniversary commemoration of the Mt. St. Helens eruption and tried to ignore those strapping heroic ghosts of our youth striding about in their high-water work jeans and hickory shirts as we made vicious fun of each other’s weight gains and hair loss…

I couldn’t help but feel a little twinge of personal loss this morning when I heard on Oregon Public Broadcasting that Jack’s burned to the ground Wednesday night. It hasn’t been a part of my life for longer that I really care to dwell on, but – like anything one might have some small personal appreciation for – it was nice that it was there. Even today, when we get together with those oldest and bestest friends from our early adulthood and reminisce about adventures that make our teenage children look at us in occasional shocked amazement (“do as I say, kids, not as I did”), some of that reverie will revolve around Jack’s…

Of course, the other thing I thought about this morning when I heard the news was, “Man, that was a long time ago”. Probably not the best way to kick off the day on a sub-freezing gray December morning just a couple of days after another frackin’ birthday…
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:49 AM 1 comments

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Things That Make You Say "Whuu??" 

...the Army Field Manual identifies what is considered to be torture during the interrogation of prisoners by military personnel and explicitly forbids several specific acts.

The CIA is not bound by the Army Field Manual. The U.S. House of Representatives has passes a bill that would require the CIA to adhere to the interrogation rules in the Army Field Manual...

The CIA says it doesn't torture, but makes damned sure that any videographic evidence of its interrogation sessions is shredded, burned, pulverized, and shot out over the open waters of the Atlantic...

The White House says that the CIA doesn't torture, but won't say what actions it considers to be torture, and threatens to veto the bill if it hits Gee Dub's desk...

It would seem that it would be reasonable to assume that the Army, in the middle of a combat situation, would have just as pressing a need to extract information out of a prisoner as any CIA agent, various episodes of "24" nonwithstanding. It would further seem that - and yes, I know that this assumes some sort of compassionate concern for employees that the Bush Administration has yet to manifest - Gee Dub and his minions would be at least passingly interested in keeping their CIA employees out of the sort of jepardy that an international war crimes trial could offer, not to mention making their own travel outside of the territorial boundaries of the United States a bit less risky...

There may be some third way, but at first blush it looks as though there are only two paths to travel here; either the Army is being denied lawful techniques of aggressive questioning that would otherwise be cool with the signatories to the UN Convention against torture, or the CIA is venturing off into Jack Bauer territory in violation of international law. There is otherwise a powerful logical inconsistency in the Bush Administration telling Army personnel that they have to abide by a certain set of rules or face court martial while threatening to veto a bill that would apply the same standards to an intelligence agency...

Not that logical consistency is scheduled to be a legacy of George W. Bush....
Posted by: Jack K. / 4:52 PM 0 comments

Stupid Is As Stupid Does 

...the slippery backslope of "inevitability" for a leading political candidate comes when the polls start slipping and a nervous panicky mood starts to grip the movers and shakers at campaign headquarters. People start doing stupid things. For your consideration, here is Bill Shaheen, a national co-chairman for (Hillary) Clinton and a prominent New Hampshire political figure discussing Barak Obama's youthful drug use:
"It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'....There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome," Shaheen said.

Now...look, everybody remembers the Swiftboat campaign in 2004 and the damage it did to John Kerry. Everybody knows how that game is played and that it has been played for a long, long time. Such sentiments about Obama's self-confessed drug use may well be getting whacked around amongst the Obama people. At the same time, this comment at this moment in this place has a a pretty heavy push-poll, "do they believe Jesus and Satan are brothers" heft to it that anybody who's thinking straight could predict is probably going to have some blowback. When your man or woman is slipping in statewide polls in the near-term primary/caucus states and doesn't necessarily shine in head to head ratings against the likely Republican candidates, stepping right out in public to whack a Democratic opponent in the groin isn't exactly the prescription for righting the listing ship...

Jeanne Shaheen may want to be forewarned; hubby's got some time on his hands now and may just want to "help" her out with her US Senate campaign...
Posted by: Jack K. / 4:31 PM 0 comments

Al Gore's House Is Phat 

...it is a first principle that, when someone steps out in front on a given issue or problem, those who fear for the health of their oxen as an outcome of this worthy's actions will immediately start scuttling around looking for signs of hypocracy that can trip the 'tearing down' process. So Michael Moore is fat, John Edwards peddles his middle-class populism on the back of his palatial mansion and $400 haircuts, and Al Gore is fat and is driven in large limosines from his own environmentally disastrous castle to the private jets that wing him around the globe on his singular climate change jihad...

Sometimes there's not much of a fix to all that mudslinging, but as Gore has demonstrated, sometimes there is:
Al Gore, who was criticized for high electric bills at his Tennessee mansion, has completed a host of improvements to make the home more energy efficient, and a building-industry group has praised the house as one of the nation's most environmentally friendly.

Obviously, this won't be quieting down the climate change deniers any time soon. They would continue to attack Gore for his own carbon footprint if he took up wearing animal skins, ate locusts and wild honey, and sailed to the climate change conference in Bali on the Kon Tiki, but there is one irrefutable fact they won't be able to get around:
Gore's improvements cut the home's summer electrical consumption by 11 percent compared with a year ago, according to utility records reviewed by The Associated Press. Most Nashville homes used 20 percent to 30 percent more electricity during the same period because of a record heat wave.

There will still be the complaints, but now Al is going to be able to say, "Yes, but I did something about it"...
Posted by: Jack K. / 4:00 PM 0 comments

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Ignoring People Who Need To Be 

...there are people whom you will run across in life who have somehow gained a grip on the big microphone for reasons that seem to have nothing to do with actual relevance or compentency. They are seldom right, have an established track record of disaster and wrongheadedness, are usually the sorts of goofballs who deserve nothing better than to have someone standing beside them wearing one of those "I'm With Stupid" tee shirts, and yet still manage to maintain some sort of strange throw-weight that gives them access to the public discourse. John Bolton is just such a person...

Were it not for the fact that we have been saddled with sabre-rattling neocons willing to shed other people's blood for their version of empire by God in order to keep us from getting too comfortable, you wouldn't know about John Bolton unless you happened to stumble across the gas station and honky tonks where he spent most of his time. We've been dealt a different hand, though, and John Bolton has been around for a while now participating in Republican foreign policy. Yesterday Der Spiegel had an interview with Bolton wherein one could almost imagine his moustache nearly leaping off his face in indignation at - in his view - the effort of the US intelligence community to step into the policy field with its new whiplash-inducing National Intelligence Estimate about Iranian desires for nuclear weapons...

The NIE, as has been much discussed, blows a hole in the side of the apparent rush by the neocon brigade to engage in armed conflict with Iran. Bolton's outrage is palable; calling it a "quasi-putsch" is pulling up just short of accusing US intelligence chiefs of treason. It's the sort of language that we lefties are usually accused of engaging in...

In Bolton's case however, we already know just how discerning he is when it comes to analysis. We don't even need to rely on his spectacularly divisive turn as recess-appointed UN Ambassador (an assignment that for the country's sake might have been better redeemed by the White House chef, had only that worthy not had better things to do). All we need to do is to look at some quotations displaying John Bolton's laser focus on and complete understanding of the threat posed by Iraq prior to our invasion:
"Iraq, despite UN sanctions, maintains an aggressive program to rebuild the infrastructure for its nuclear, chemical, biological, and missile programs. In each instance, Iraq's procurement agents are actively working to obtain both weapons-specific and dual-use materials and technologies critical to their rebuilding and expansion efforts, using front companies and whatever illicit means are at hand. "


"We estimate that once Iraq acquires fissile material - whether from a foreign source or by securing the materials to build an indigenous fissile material capability - it could fabricate a nuclear weapon within one year. It has rebuilt its civilian chemical infrastructure and renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard, sarin, and VX. It actively maintains all key aspects of its offensive BW [biological weapons] program."

John Bolton has a well-established record with regard to his accuracy of assessing the threat posed by the WMD programs of other nations. Even a blind pig finds an acorn once every great long while, but it would be a sucker's bet to think that he is any closer to the truth this time than he has been in the past. The only tool he understands is the hammer, and Iran is simply another nail, just like Iraq before the invasion he so desperately desired. Bolton isn't ever likely to become some latter-day "only Nixon could go to China" sort; conflict, armed conflict with death and destruction is the name of his game, and that's why he just the sort of person who should be ignored...
Posted by: Jack K. / 5:52 PM 0 comments

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