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

Saturday, October 04, 2008

I'm Not Sure Jurisprudence Is Supposed To Work This Way: OJ Edition 

...count me amongst the legion that think that O.J. Simpson got away with one back in 1995. Given that, count me amongst what will probably a much, much smaller mini-legion who think that the outcome of "The Trial Of The Century" had nothing to do with his current legal difficulties in Las Vegas. It would appear that the "not guilty" verdict in that trial has had the sort of influence in both his prosecution and conviction in this current case that the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was supposed to prevent, if all the commentary from all sorts of interested parties is any measure...

This trial wasn't supposed to right a wrong; it was supposed to address whether he had committed armed robbery and kidnapping in an effort to - as he claimed - retrieve personal belongings. The interesting aspect of the outcome, at least in the above-linked story, is that the subject of retrieval of personal items isn't even mentioned. There isn't any discussion of the merits of the prosecution's case regarding whether 'armed robbery' is a legitimate charge if the stuff you're stealing is actually your stuff. It's all about evening the score from his 1995 murder trial. I won't miss OJ when he's gone, but this isn't the way the system is supposed to work...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:17 PM 0 comments

The Mysteries Of The MSM 

...I'm not a conspiracy-minded sort of guy. In my world, a gang of zealous Saudi's highjacked airliners and flew them into buildings on Sept. 11, 2001; United flight 800 crashed because of an explosion in the center fuel tank; JFK was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald. Because I'm not one to see the likelihood of conspiracy, I don't automatically react with suspicion when a major media outlet decides, many months after the first revelation of the fact that Barack Obama has ever even met William Ayers, to publish a lengthy article about whatever 'relationship they might have had as we enter the last four weeks of the campaign...

I don't think that the New York Times is 'in the tank' for Huggy Bear. The article doesn't provide any sort of information suggesting that Obama's one great life regret is being born too late to join the Weather Underground. On the other hand, I do believe that the publication of this article at this late date is a consciously thought-through effort by the NYT to try to prove that it isn't some sort of biased liberal answer to FAUX News. There aren't any accompanying articles indulging in in-depth analysis of the connections between Sarah Palin and her running mate John McCain with that small gaggle of anti-semitic and anti-Catholic winger pastors who have been allowed to circle around them until things got too hot...

If the publication of this article at this late date isn't an intentional effort to demonstrate some strange twisted sort of evenhandedness, then its publication is a mystery. It has as much relevance to the current campaign as the ol' Maverick's connections to Charles Keating (OK, so maybe even less, given that Obama hasn't suggesting bombing Army recruiting offices to end the Iraq war while McCain has a long history of advocating the very sort of deregulation that made his intercessions on behalf of Mr. Keating so notable)...and yet we don't see any NYT articles plumbing the depths of that relationship. Bill Ayers isn't some sort of desperado on the lam; he's a fully functioning member of a society that - last time I checked - still placed some value in the idea of redemption. After all, the Supreme Court of the United States and a small majority of the voters in the United States have seen fit to allow a former cocaine addict and draft dodger to run this country for most of the last eight desperate years...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:51 PM 0 comments

Friday, October 03, 2008

News You Could Use...If You Knew It 

...with all the noise about the bailout rescue of financial industry and all those nasty pork-barrel handouts (see below), it's probably understandable that the MSM has somehow unfortunately overlooked the most recent failure of Gee Dub's GWOT. The facts are simple:

1) Federal prosecutors introduced totally unrelated information in order to stir up the jury and gain a conviction.

2) The trial judge let them do it.

3) The three-judge panel - comprised of a Clinton appointee, a George H. W. Bush appointee, and a George W. Bush appointee - said that the actions of the federal prosecutors were inappropriate and essentially fired the trial judge regarding this prosecution.

Regardless of where you position yourself on that "righteous hard-eyed prosecution/railroad the mopes to prove a point" continuum, this should have been bigger news than it ended up being. This panel of the Second Circuit made an in-yer-face declaration to Bushco's Justice Department that it buys off on Joe Friday's insistance on "just the facts, ma'am". The prosecution engaged in a bit of overreach that would embarrass any thinking county DA and it didn't get away with it. The two defendants may actually be guilty of the proffered charges, but that doesn't matter any more after the combined misbehavior of the prosecutors and the trial judge...

No wonder Gee Dub's minions and handlers so desperately wanted all the trials to be military tribunals...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:29 PM 0 comments

A Strange Saga Of Bailouts, Pork Barrels, And Contrarian Votes 

...much - no, I'm serious, a great deal of much - is being made of the odd laundry list of tax cuts and other "porkbarrel" earmarks that were attached to the financial rescue bill in the US Senate in an apparent effort to entice Senators (and, perhaps more importantly, Representatives) to vote for H.R. 1424 As Amended. Of interest to the citizens of Oregon, fingers have been pointed at various legislators from our fair Beaver State over what are considered a couple of the top examples of "pork" in the host of amendments...

Primary examples of interest:
1. Sec. 503. Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children. (Page 263)

6. Sec. 601. Secure rural schools and community self-determination program.

In the case of Item The First, the presumption has been that Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith snuck this bizarre bit of wording into the bill to somehow pay back that massive toy arrow cabal that has a vise-like grip on political activities in the state. Both Wyden and Smith are denying this, of course, and Wyden has gone so far as to hide his tracks by voting against the bill in any case. In truth, the original inclusion of youth archery arrows in the excise tax was a stupid mistake in the first place, and it is an embarrassment that it required a supposedly 'must-pass' bill to fix the problem, regardless any wild-eyed insistence by Taxpayers for Common Sense (an oxymoron in this case) that some archery retailer in Myrtle Point is going to start leafing through the mega-yacht catalog because of this tax break...

Item The Sixth is even more interesting. The Secure Rural Schools Act was passed in 2000, with it's lead sponsors being Oregon Democratic Rep. Peter Defazio and Senator Ron Wyden and Idaho Republican certified wacko Rep. Bill Sali and my old friend Senator Larry Craig. An aside: without getting into the actual formulas that are used to calculate payments, I will say that - as a life-long small town westerner who has lived in several rural communities completely surrounded by millions of acres of untaxable federal land - I am an ardent supporter of some sort of federal payment to counties, and I will debate any and all comers on the merits of the legislation until they get bored/tired and wander away...

Having said that, I can't help but note that the identification by Taxpayers for Common Sense of these four legislators as perhaps being the reason this bit of "pork" was included in the bill is another bit of near-total failure for the pitchfork and torches set. On an issue that is of extreme importance to rural counties in both states, three of the four still voted no...

Somebody put these items in the amendment, and that somebody may have thought of these and others as "sweeteners" to attract votes, but clearly that gambit didn't work all that well as far as some people who supposedly are the leading supporters for those bits of "pork" were concerned...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:42 PM 0 comments

Monday, September 29, 2008

On My Confession Of Past Sins 

I have a confession to make. Confession, after all, is supposed to be good for the soul, even if it doesn't do jack-all for the rest of the body. My confession is pretty simple, but highlights a burden I have carried for the better part of this decade: I used to think John McCain was moderately cool...

Back during the 2000 election cycle, I found myself often fascinated and occasionally somewhat stirred by interviews McCain gave to the media. These feelings were wrong, my head would scream to my heart, because McCain and I disagreed on more issues than you could shake a stick at, but the soothing siren call of that maverickyness on some important issues where I did agree with him was powerful indeed and sometimes I just couldn't find a mast to lash myself to. Ironically, I have Karl Rove to thank for saving me from the potentially difficult dilemma of what to do on the first Tuesday of November, 2000...

Fortunately for my personal peace of mind, John McCain's personal ambition solved all my problems in subsequent years. His philosophical and physical embrace of all things Bushco (hence the name Huggy Bear) cured me of this curious addiction, and his behavior since early summer has guaranteed that I wouldn't vote for him for dogcatcher. The last fortnight has been hard on ol' St. John, and today's performance cements in my mind for all time the shame that I feel for ever having thought that he was worthy of sitting behind the Bid Desk in the Oval Office in any capacity other than a favored big-money donor looking for a memento photo...

Huggy Bear's reaction to the defeat of the financial [rescue] [bailout] (circle one) bill was an example of the sort of marrow-deep cheap political calculation that finally, once and for all, assigns the ol' Maverick to the class of craven desperate political lackeys that he has fought so hard to separate himself from for the last three decades with all his easy talk about being THE Maverick. In one slick move that will be analyzed for decades to come by political scientists in an effort to detect some faint semblance of critical human thought to support it, Huggy Bear emerged from several days of actions borne solely by raw political calculation to declare that Barack Obama was at fault for the failure of the House bailout bill because of raw political calculation...

It was a stunning performance, really, for all the wrong reasons. McCain has struggled mightily over the last five days to demonstrate that HE, in fact, was the real leader and capped his showy theatrics with a claim in front of literally "hundreds" of supporters (not thousands - like Obama draws - or tens of thousands - like Obama draws) that he - St. John McCain - had personally shown the leadership to bring about this distasteful but necessary rescue of the financial system. A few minutes later, Breaking News revealed that he may just have perhaps overstated the importance of his contribution, given that the measure failed. His response in a presser after which he sprinted from the mike as fast as his aged legs would carry him without taking questions: it's Barack Obama's fault for having injected politics into the process...

John McCain has already cheapened the whole concept underlying the term "Maverick" to the point that he should seriously worry about stumbling across either Tom Cruise or James Garner in a social setting for fear of the outcome. He is now threatening to also cheapen any residual good will possessed by people of moderate politcal persuasion - the very voters he is trying to impress - because of his total abandonment of any sense of honor that his military service or his heroic story line as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton may have earned him in those moderate minds. He has become George W. Bush without the cleverness or the darkly perverse sense of style and power or the amazing media/message control that Gee Dub's various handlers crafted through what will come to be known as the dark ages at the start of the new millennium...

Eight years ago I almost fell for the Potemkin Village image that Huggy Bear was offering. I should have known better then, but like the late Henry Hyde said about Carrie Snodgrass during the Clinton impeachment days, it was just a 'youthful indiscretion' that we all apparently can be subject to during our 40's. I've done my penance, which is odd in itsownself for a Lutheran, but I feel better about myself because I came to understand what's true and what matters in real life. I suspect that John McCain can't make the same claim...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:41 PM 0 comments

Sunday, September 28, 2008

If McCain's Lost Fareed Zakaria, He's Lost The Country 

...no, really! I'm serious here. Fareed Zakaria is widely viewed in progressive circles as little more that - at best - a fellow traveler or 'symp' to the world of wingnuts, but if there is any such thing as an objective rating system for political proclivities (no, I don't know who would decide or how the determinations would be made), he would most likely be placed in the 'centrist' category. In that difficult-to-define world, populated by people who don't pass muster when administered the usual litmus tests of either the left or the right because they don't exclusively hold "all the right views", Zakaria is a spokesman. When it comes to the bone-deep issue of John McCain's ability to make a decision for the good of the country, Zakaria has this to say:
In these times, for John McCain to have chosen (Sarah Palin) to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, it is simply not true.

Why yes, it is in fact another crass lefty media attack on Sarah Palin. Except, objectively, in the instance of Fareed Zakaria it isn't so much. This isn't about bridges in Ketchikan or Troopergate or personal and political history; Zakaria is talking about John McCain, even though the target of his derision throughout most of the piece is Gov. Palin. He isn't even invoking the usual lefty observations about an older, battered man with potentially serious health concerns making this particular selection for the person 'a heartbeat away'. Zakaria is addressing the role of the Vice President as an advisor to the President and participant in Administration discussions, how Sarah Palin will fulfill that roll, and what it says about the ol' Maverick that he thought that she is the perfect person to redeem that responsibility...

Zakaria asks and answers the question "Did John McCain pick a running mate who is capable of functioning successfully in the role of Vice President". It's not as silly a question as it may look at first glance, given the recent history of the position. In the entire span of my life (including those early years I don't remember), that role has had an increasing importance in the function of an administration. Most VP's dating back to Nixon have had more value than 'a warm bucket of spit' (although Nixon was probably the last of the traditional vice presidents and Dan Quayle stands as the benchmark for the premise that vice presidential candidates don't have any influence on the election). More to the point, there has been an evolution in the role of the vice president from an attender of state funerals, attack dogs, and speakers at minor events. The last 16 years has seen a dramatic increase in the power of the vice presidency, and the idea that the running mate doesn't matter all that much in a presidential election completely ignores the last 7 1/2 years...

The fundamental question that Zakaria is asking is whether Palin is ready to participate meaningfully in Executive Branch activities - not whether she is ready to 'take over' - and the answer is "no". He didn't say it, but I will: Quayle was the closest thing to a laughing stock we have seen in the VP role in the last half century, but he could at least speak in halfway coherent sentences (even if he couldn't spell 'potato'). Like Palin, he was a stretch to reach out to a base that wasn't comfortable with the leader of the ticket, but at least George H.W. Bush knew he was naming a running mate with 12 years in Congress (having defeated two incumbent Democrats for his House and Senate seats) and a somewhat reasonable resume before that. John McCain didn't know any such thing before he chose his running mate; his was a reckless selection that addressed the immediate hunger for 'ticket balancing' at the expense of any sort of understanding of the roles that a vice president can and might fill. His decision on this first major decision at the presidential wannabe level is losing his support with centrists of the punditocracy; that decision may be informing the decisions of more voters than he realizes...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:24 PM 0 comments

Hey, Look! A Free Movie In My Sunday Paper! 

...the only real reason I'm surprised that my Sunday issue of the Bend (Oregon) Bulletin has my own personal copy of the divisive, racist, politically motivated DVD "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" is because I had learned from other sources - as this LA Times piece mentions - that the DVD was going to be distributed in about 70 newspapers in battleground states. Seems like a waste of time and money to me; the population of Oregon east of the Cascade Range is so deeply, conservatively 'red' that any effort to whip up fear, hysteria, xenophobic hatred, and a quivering desire to vote for John McCain could well serve as the example offered to explain the old phrase "preaching to the choir"...

The Bulletin did offer a warning of sorts. On page A3 there was a moderately small box kind of over in the lower left quadrant of the page saying that the included DVD didn't represent the views or opinions the newspaper. Unlike the Portland Oregonian and some other newspapers, the Bulletin editors haven't yet offered the "freedom of speech" justification; heaven only knows whether that's because they just haven't had a need to (since there may well not be all that many complaints) or whether they are smart enough to understand the logical fallacy of such an argument regarding paid advertising being accepted by a privately-owned enterprise unencumbered by any legal warrant obliging adherence to that right...

Whether this little gift in my paper is a bit of pro-Huggy Bear political activity by a tax-exempt organization is officially open to question, but smart money can look at the almost exclusive distribution in hotly contested battleground states and know how to bet. I haven't opened it yet, and given the fact that I'm a fairly adept reader and have probably been exposed to more information about the looming horrors of Islamofascism than this DVD will provide, I probably won't...

...although it would make a pretty convenient coaster, being all shiny and free and all...
Posted by: Jack K. / 4:50 PM 0 comments

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