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

Saturday, December 22, 2007

The Growing Saga Of J. Edgar Hoover 

...the more one learns from history, the more one realizes that all that talk about "eternal vigilence" may not sufficiently address the clear need to direct a sizable chunk of that vigilence inward. A perfect example: we learn from newly declassified documents that J. Edgar Hoover had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and arrest up to 12,000 people named on an "enemies list" that he had been nurturing for many years...

There was no pressing national emergency threatening our borders or internal security. The jitters of the newly commenced Korean conflict were no doubt intense, but Hoover's response was remarkably, breathtakingly outsized to the actual need. All one needs to do is to imagine the president being - instead of Harry Truman - George W. Bush and it becomes clear how fragile is the slim thread by which hangs a set of civil liberties thought to have been long set as established principles...
Posted by: Jack K. / 4:37 PM 0 comments

That's Why They Call It Winter 

...well, I thought I had done pretty well after the 15 inches of snow that fell over the last couple of days. I found a guy to plow my road, mobilized my teenage workforce to shovel the decks, and used the snowblower to clean out the driveway. Everything looked good. And then the Name-Brand Corporation package delivery guy showed up....

His complaints about the road conditions getting into my place were explicit and pointed. Allowed as how he would have a Merry Christmas only if he was able to survive the trip back to pavement without getting stranded in a snowbank and being devoured by wolves. I expressed some surprise at his plight, since I have been driving my pickup in and out regularly in two-wheel-drive and you would think his truck would get around better than that because of the greater rear axle weight. With one final observation about the quality of my "plowed" road, he hopped back into his van and - all-season highway tread tires desperately spinning in the snow - fishtailed his way out my driveway on his singular quest for civilization...

I'm a pretty sympathetic guy all in all, but it snows here in winter. Sometimes it snows a lot here, and if you aren't going to put on proper winter traction tires, you better be all in with rolling around in the snow putting on your tire chains. You won't otherwise get any sympathy from a guy who spent a goodly amount of money and time, just like every other time it's snowed over the last decade, getting things into what he thinks is pretty good shape...
Posted by: Jack K. / 4:11 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

When All You Have Is A Lemon, Make A Silk Purse 

...who knows where the truth actually lays (or lies; I'm tired and basic language skills are the first to go). Perhaps it's actually true that concern about the ongoing occupation of Iraq is slipping down the list of things voting Americans care most passionately about, thereby creating a lessening sense of pressure about our continued presence in Iraq. On the other hand, maybe it's the case that Congressional Democrats suffer such a bad case of PTSD at the hands of Karl Rove's school of scorched earth politics and the treatment they've received from the SCLM that they must endure screaming sweaty nightmares and massive ugly paranoia fits at the mere thought of showing some sign of muscular opposition to an invasion and occupation of Iraq that will serve as a textbook example for generations to come of how not to engage in nation-building at gunpoint. It probably really doesn't matter which is the case. We are where we are, and the simple fact is that Congress is only one final House of Representatives vote away from essentially giving Gee Dub the Iraq occupation funding he wanted, no strings attached...

It's a tale of two wars. Afghanistan was a righteous bust that is starting to go all wrong primarily because of inadequate attention to the task at hand. The invasion of Afghanistan was a direct attack against a regime that coddled and supported the people who engineered and masterminded an attack on US soil. Iraq was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time for the wrong reasons, and all the sickening efforts at revisionist history about "Congress forced our hands" will not erase all the zero's and one's that sit on various forms of storage media spelling out the rush to conflict that the Bush administration engineered. Disgust over the mismanagement of the Iraq occupation may not have been the only reason Democrats took over both Houses of Congress in 2006, but it surely played a major role, and all that hope and promise seems to have finally drained completely away from Democratic leadership...

There is plenty of brave talk from Democrats about the nature of the budget that they have passed. There is no doubt some good that will come from the somewhat meager budget increases that they managed to scratch out of the White House, but you can almost hear the silk purses being stitched together by the Democratic leadership. On the issue that mobilized the base and the faithful and the vast muddled middle, the same can't be said. The media is feasting - and will dine further - on the opportunity to use various versions of "Democrats Cave To Bush" headlines, creating the distinct and long-lasting impression that Congressional Democrats do little more than posture and serve at the Pleasure of The President. You are having a bad day when Oregon's Republican Senator Gordon Smith has enough political moxie to gussy up his upcoming reelection run by voting against continued unfetterd, no-strings-attached funding for continued occupation in Iraq and half of the Democrats don't...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:43 PM 0 comments

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