<$BlogRSDURL$>

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

Friday, August 08, 2008

What Is Wrong With Me? 

...on principle, I have issues (as we used to say to sound all cool and trendy a number of years ago) with the People's Republic of China being awarded the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Rather than being a 'coming out' that encourages the Chinese government to allow a more open society and become a more collaborative player on the international stage, the advent of the XXIX Olympiad has seemed to represent little more than a ratification of China's self-reserved right to continue the suppression of any commonly understood expression of civil rights, the right to autonomy for the Tibetan people, and any efforts of international agents to try to stem the human catastrophe that is the Darfur region of Sudan. Given that stipulation, I am conflicted - even ashamed, perhaps - at my initial reaction to this story, which I first heard this morning on Oregon Public Broadcasting...

I laughed out loud. All alone in my kitchen in that pre-dawn moment, I laughed. Out. Loud. OK, so I wasn't technically "alone"; the other members of the human subset of the family weren't up yet, but the dogs and cats were and clearly misread my sudden jocularity as some sort of epiphany that would result in my actually feeding them after years of steadfast refusal (there is a reason I don't do a lot of Friday Pet Blogging; I grew up as the unwilling caretaker for vast herds of dogs, cats, tropical fish, horses, and assorted other "pets", most of which weren't mine, and I long insisted that the first true manifestation of adulthood was being able to independently elect to not have pets to take care of. The addition of a life partner and children to my carefully crafted life plan has robbed me of some of that particular independence, but any time any of those other human members of my little tribe are in the house, I Don't Feed Pets.)...

What made me laugh out loud was this part:
Tirian Mink tells The Oregonian that police told him to hand over his credit card and then used it to pay for his ticket back to the United States.

Imagine, as I did at that instant, one of those classic old black and white WWII movies with the evil scar-faced Nazi's demanding to see the hero's 'papers', then add in a demand to see a credit card, too. Couple that with more recent Cold War theatrics where disapproved-of people get put on a plane out of the country. What the hell; think about our own deportation/refusal of entry history over the last several years of the GWOT. Chinese officials clearly live in a rather savvy but clearly different world; not only will they hustle you out of the country when you bust through their meme-planes, but they will confiscate your credit card and make you pay for the tickets to your expulsion. This sort of thing may have happened before, but I've never heard of it before and the plain audacity of it all made me laugh out loud...

It doesn't take a great deal of reflection to get to the point of understanding that this episode is an absolute confirmation of my basic reservations about the PRC being awarded the 29th Olympiad, but - in the moment - it honestly did strike me as an amusing story.

Clearly, I need a vacation....
Posted by: Jack K. / 10:18 PM 0 comments

Thursday, August 07, 2008

The Beast Claims Another Nine 

...there's really nothing much to say, except to offer the deepest of condolences to the families of those lost and offer prayers for the recovery of the four survivors. Everybody out there on that remote clearing in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest was trying to do the best he or she could to respond to a situation that needed to be addressed, but something went horribly wrong...

The game of wildland firefighting is played on a rough, unforgiving field. Theory says that you will be safe if you do everything right, but in the real world there is no Q.E.D. for this particular proposition. After-action analysis will no doubt reveal that there was some failure - either human or mechanical - that led to this tragedy, but it is just that: After The Fact. It doesn't really matter when you get down to the bone of the matter, because everybody out there on the north side of the Shasta-T was trying to do what needed to be done, because that's all you can do in the moment...

Firefighting, whether it be structural or wildland, is a wildly dangerous thing to do, regardless of whether you are on the ground or in the air. Anyone who has ever faced The Beast, even for the briefest moment, can't have anything but the utmost respect for those folks who are are out there right now trying to face The Beast down. These nine lost firefighters were heroes, as were the four crash survivors and those who came to their aid, because they were willing to be out there involved in an activity that most people, if given the choice after a clear explanation of what 'a good day' looks like, would flee to the nearest exit to avoid. As confirmation starts coming out, we finally have to come to grips with the fact that the fraternity is that much smaller tonight. Even though we may have never met them, we will mourn these fliers and firefighters because they were a part of us...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:05 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Missing The Point 

...it is entirely possible that any random talk about the recent "maturing" of the Bushco foreign policy machine was simply a bit of confused misunderstanding about where the "America's Mighty Thunder" machine was actually heading. Today, an official real-live animated meat-puppet representing this twisted illegal oligarchy's inner circle had this to say about the supposedly dangerous Iranian conundrum:
The Pentagon said Tuesday that any move by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz would be "self-defeating" because its weak economy is so heavily dependent on oil revenues.

"Shutting down the Strait, closing down the Persian Gulf, would be sort of a self-defeating exercise," said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary. "That doesn't say anything about whether we tolerate such a thing to happen."

As one of its old time favorites Paul Harvey might say, "Closed Circuit for Gee Dub's Warmongers: You need to pick one or the other". Either Iran is an islamofascotalibanistic terrorist regime anxious to experience the afterlife or it isn't. Either "tough diplomacy" will work or it won't. You aren't dealing with a Democratic office candidate here; you are dealing with a sovereign nation that you charged out of the blue as being the spawn of Satan several years ago, and on the "shooting down a commercial airliner full of innocent civilians" scoreboard, it's still "Home Team - 0 Visiting Team - 1". Bombing any portion of this sovereign nation without an overt declaration of war is probably going to make it forget that whole "you deserved this, dOOD, 'cause your islamofascist government sucks" thing and probably take its residents' minds off any particular question about who's right and who's wrong and what might happen to their oil profits down the road...

[edited for clarity]
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:06 PM 0 comments

Paris For President 

...OK, so I don't think that I've ever linked to a Daily Kos post - I mean, like he needs the traffic (who knows, it may even be illegal) - but the find in this diary is even better than Stephen Colbert's consideration of Britney as the perfect Republican presidential candidate last night on "The Word"....

Paris For President!

...Huggy Bear may get more humor than he wanted in this campaign...

UPDATE: It appears that this video, perhaps because of the Daily Kos diary or perhaps because of a HuffPo post, is about to go viral. Doesn't matter who found it first; it's all good....
Posted by: Jack K. / 3:40 PM 0 comments

Gordon Smith Skips The Party 

...the news today out of the Gordon Smith campaign shouldn't come as all that much of a surprise, I suppose. In his effort to convince Oregon voters that he has once again - just like six years ago during his last campaign - become the state's newest and most eager Democratic Senator, Gordo has highlighted his close working relationship with Barack Obama. He has also apparently gotten over his relatively recent distaste for John Kerry's Frenchiness and socialism-spewing and has found that Kerry is, in fact, a prince of a guy and a man that he has worked closely with in the Senate (in response, Shorter Kerry: "Shove it, Vegie Boy")...

Now, in further effort to prove that the "R" behind his name is just some sort of tragic typo, Gordon Smith has decided to be literally as far away as possible from the Republican National Convention without actually leaving the Lower 48. The stated reason is that "a rare week" without Senate sessions will provide a prime opportunity to campaign over the Labor Day Weekend...

Just a couple of thoughts here:

1) The Senate is on it's August recess. Right Now. There will not be any Senate sessions until 8 September. The first week of September is not a "rare" week, but is instead the fifth week of the recess...

B) It would seem as though any one who is a high-ranking politician in his party could choose, if he so wished, to pop in on the party in Minneapolis a little late - like, say, Tuesday - if he wanted to campaign over the Labor Day Weekend. I mean, it's not like there's going to be all that much happening on Monday other than some guy giving a speech, and Gordo wouldn't be interested in hearing that particular bit of elocution in any case...

In truth, Gordo would probably rather fight a Yaquina Bay sea lion with a pickle fork than be caught in the same viewfinder as that particular speechifier, 'cause that kind of shot is going to cast his efforts to transmorgrify into Oregon's second Democratic Senator in a deep shade. Smith is running away from the Republican brand as fast as he can, and caging some snaps of the family gathered around the Mary Tyler Moore statue in early September won't get that done...
Posted by: Jack K. / 2:22 PM 0 comments

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?