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

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The Cost Of Keeping Your Powder Dry 

...for purely academic reasons, it is truly a shame that the present Democratic leadership in Congress is opposed to launching impeachment proceedings against occupants of the working offices of both wings of the White House. All partisanship aside, the damage that the Bush administration has done to any common, reasonable understanding of how the Executive branch of our federal government is supposed to work can hold it's own with anything previously considered "The Most Corrupt" dating back over half a dozen generations. The list of High Crimes and Misdemeanors is getting so long that it can't be recited in one breath, to the point that even this one little example gets lost in the obnoxious buzz of election-year news...

"...consistent with industry best practices" is the excuse the Bush minions toss out. At the same time they are failing to flog their way to some sort of reasonable explanation - which would be rendered null and void by presidential record-keeping laws in any case - as to why this sudden powerful urge to employ industry standards only gripped them during a particular timeframe during which their communications might reveal actions that most people would judge as being cheap political treason for political gain. Unfortunately, this sorts of lame explanation that the dog ate their backup tapes will stand unchallenged by Congress just as the use of signing statements to deny the will of Congress, the subversion or violation of a dumptruck load of Articles of a couple of Geneva Conventions, the rank politicizing of the Justice Department through the US Attorney firings, and all the K Street/Abramoff rot at the core of this Administration have in the past. Any one of these rises to a higher standard for impeachment than does the simple act of lying about a blow job, and all of them pose a far more stark threat to the foundations of our form of government...

Giving the Bush administration a pass on any - and, perhaps more importantly, ALL of these items - does nothing more than push back the threshhold of just what exactly is a bad thing for a president to do. The failure to act in any or the sum of these cases will simply make it more difficult in the future to hold an out-of-control Executive branch with weird delusions of unitary grandeur accountable for its actions. That flapping noise you have been hearing is the idea of checks and balances flying out the window...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:32 PM 0 comments

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Not Just A Game For Old White Guys 

...clearly the politics of change doesn't necessarily lead to a change in politics. We sit today in witness of what is beginning to shape up as a two-person race for the Democratic presidential nomination - for good or ill - that is beginning to show that, when it comes to old fashioned negative campaigning in the grand tradition of old white guys politics, it matters not what the race or gender of the candidate may be...

Strange vibes surge through campaigns when they begin to savor the sweet taste of possibilities. Once they begin to suspect that they could really grasp that big prize in their sweaty hands, candidates and their minions begin to lose sight of all those lofty words and heart-felt sentiments about "positive" and "above the dirty fray" and "focusing on the issues" that may have been uttered in the early innocent days. As example that this is a part of the human condition rather than a hallmark of traditional old white guy politics, we see Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton getting down in a nasty little spate over the politics of race, all for the benefit of traditionally Democratic black voters in upcoming primaries...

This is one of the ways you can lose an election that you weren't supposed to lose. Tear up the linkages; pit segments of the tenuously knitted together Democratic coalition against each other in ways that will leave bruised and angry feelings; piss potential voters off enough that they say "the hell with this" and sit home watching "American Idol" on the first Tuesday in November and let a Mike Huckabee or John McCain or Mitt Romney start filling out change-of-address cards that have '1600 Pennsylvania Avenue' in the "new address" block. All of this can happen simply because too many people feeling that they have too much at stake have decided to slap at every button they can reach, including the one labelled "Race". A Pox on both campaign's houses; may black clouds of turkey vultures descend on both campaign headquarters, killing the surrounding vegetation with their droppings and frightening the neighbors with horrible vile screeching late into the night...

This is the twenty first century; it's not 1960 or 1964 or 1968, it's 2008. The first four candidates across the finish line in the last two Democratic contests were - in no particular order or combination of varying characteristics - Hispanic, black, white, and female. We have reached a remarkable cultural crossroad in American politics with this season's Democratic competition for the presidential nomination at a time when any Democratic candidate represents a better choice that a continuation of the policies with which we have been saddled over the last seven years. Arguing about race issues smacks of traditional "old white guy" politics of division, and is a pretty good way to set the table for another four years of Republican occupation of the White House...
Posted by: Jack K. / 5:38 PM 0 comments

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