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

Friday, May 01, 2009

Wishin' And Hopin' And Thinkin' And Prayin' 

...OK, so this clearly isn't what Burt Bacharach had in mind when he and Hal David wrote that song back in the early 1960's, but the first line certainly seems to fit the mood that Senate Republicans are in these days as a result of the news that Associated Supreme Court Justice David Souter has decide to retire. On the other hand, maybe their unrequited lust for a return to power may fit with the lyrics after all, because there is suddenly a whole lot of really negative wishin' and hopin' going on, as Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) demonstrated:
"This came unexpectedly, so people will have to evaluate what it means to the agenda, and the majority leader will have to take that into the account,” Cornyn said. “Regulatory reform, patent reform, health care reform ... I'm not sure if we can do all of it at the same time, so this may push some of these items farther back on the agenda. I do expect judicial nomination to suck up quite a bit of oxygen."

Given the fact that most of us out here in the real world have to deal with a great many important issues simultaneously without the ability to dictate pace or due dates every damned day, Cornyn is - only in the most charitable context - suggesting that Republicans aren't sufficiently equipped intellectually to deal with more than just a couple of issues at a time. If one were to accept this most charitable context, all I can say is "Thank God Republican Senators aren't qualified to serve at any level from Incident Commander down to Squad Leader on a wildfire", because the outcome would most likely be deadly and disastrous...

Although that whole 'insufficiently intellectually equipped' thing is probably a given in any case, it is simply the case that Senate Republicans are setting the stage for a massive public fight, one that they will launch mostly for purposes of encouraging their beleaguered base and picking off a few of the more right-leaning Independents that abandoned them in the last election. Even though they were staunch supporters of the right of a president to have an up or down vote for judicial nominees over the last few years of the Bushco regime and even toyed with the idea of the "nuclear option" back in '05, they will once again rely on their long-standing strategic hope that the American people will be as bone-deep bovine stupid as Republican strategy has always relied on us to be, hoping that we won't remember how things went down the last time they had their sweaty mitts on the levers of power...

Life sucks when you don't matter; Senate Republicans don't want to be in that place so they are going to try to matter by causing as much trouble as they can during the upcoming confirmation process, regardless of the nominee. Back when times were good and they were Kings Of The World, managing the process was easy to do, but 'now' isn't 'back then' and they really don't have any control over the process aside from opportunities to cause the sort of trouble that they desperately hope will rally voters to their cause. Wishin' and Hopin' may not be the best political strategy, but it's all they have left right now...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:47 PM 0 comments

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Doing Things That Are Illegal In The Real World 

...anybody who spends any time lingering around the evil newspaper-destroying world of the lefty intertubes knows all about the 'rebranding' effort that the Republic-Fascist party has decided to launch. A great deal of much-deserved ridicule has been hurled at the idea that "Maverick" John McCain, Jeb "Bush Lite" Bush, Haley Barbour (for God's sake, of all people), Bobby "Volcano Man" Jindal, and Mitt "I am not a Cultist; Vote For Me...Please" Romney can comprise the brain trust that will somehow create a coherent message that would bring the R-F party back to electoral prominence...

The reality-based fact is that none of these figureheads matter because they aren't actually out-front spokesmen for the party. In fact, any sort of 'rebranding' message that they might cook up in order to broaden the party's appeal would be considered false and misleading advertising out here in the real world - the sort of thing that is subject to investigations and legal action - because, for better or for worse, none of these people matter much right now. They aren't the face of the party. They aren't the people that are actually carrying what is and will continue to be the R-F message to the general population. That role is being filled by chatterers like Tom Delay, Dick "Big Dick" Cheney, a host of ferret-faced cable news network "true believers" who continue to spout the old talking points, and the Big Party Leader Dittohead Dog hisownself...

Anything that this group tries to crank out as some sort of New Republic-Fascist Message is going to run hard up against the rhetoric of all those characters, along with the occasional unforeseen eruption by party members like Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-Homophobia) that demonstrate the true underpinnings of the party. This celebrity-heavy 'rebranding' cabal can't help but create a so-called message that will be little more than false advertising, an effort to present to an otherwise unsuspecting public a statement of the principles of the R-F party that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the actual beliefs of the hardcore party faithful who run that show. Drug manufacturers and diet supplement pushers get into big legal trouble for misrepresenting the quality and value of their products. The Republic-Fascist party should be held to the same standard...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:57 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

For When You Think You're Having A Tough Day At The Office 

...imagine trying to successfully 'hatch' your project in the top of an old-growth fir tree at the crest of the Orygun Cascades...

...during what is laughingly referred to around these parts as "Spring"...

(courtesy the Odell Lake Eagle Cam)
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:49 PM 0 comments

The Strange Colors Of Irony 

...personally, I think that Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic party is, on balance, a plus, although not for all of that "60 Votes" filibuster-busting stuff that has dominated news reporting and commentary. I don't have any illusions that Specter is going to transmorgrify into some sort of rock-solid progressive vote (although Pennsylvania finally has a Democratic Senator who to some degree supports a woman's right to choose).

The benefit I see resides more in the realm of "another Bad News Day for Republicans", wherein a well-recognized, long-serving, senior member of the Republican caucus lets the whole world know that his party has abandoned the principles that made him a well-recognized, long-serving, senior member of that party. This isn't Richard Shelby or Ben Nighthorse Campbell we're talking about here, nor is it Jim Jeffords. This is a person that the vast minimally-informed middle of the American populace are likely to recognize by name and by photo, and that sort of defection damages the Republic-Fascist party to a degree that they and - so far as I can tell, from watching some of the cable news offerings tonight - a large part of the polotical commentariat don't appear to understand...

The argument can clearly be made that Specter made his wild leap based on simple personal political calculations rather than as a result of differences over personal philosophical philosophy, at least if blogtopia and a million words spewing from the mouths of all those strange floating cable TV heads are to be correctly understood. The poll numbers were obvious (and actually pretty cheery for Democrats, because a victorious Pat Toomey would have been stomped into a mudhole by any Democrat who could pass the 'mirror-fog' test) and the obvious RNC theme that Arlen Was Goin' DOWN wasn't likely to lead somewhere down the road to any sort of Kumbaya moment between Specter and whatever the hell poses as the leadership of the Republic-Fascist Party these days...

The most surprising chitter I've witnessed tonight was Tweety Matthews's star turn on "Countdown" (transcripts not yet available at this writing). In his...well...I guess "rant" would most do it justice...Tweety was no less than a human iteration of a spitting cobra, spewing all sorts of deadly venom about what he apparently views as little less than treason/sedition by another feckless political animal looking no farther down the road than the waypoint of the next election. He went on to a degree that would make any normal person really question whether Arlen Specter could trust his own personal safety if he found himself in the same room as Tweety. Truly an amazing rant...

First of all, the question comes to mind "well, why not?" It is clearly a leap to say that Specter - or pretty much any other politician who has dipped from the well of political power - does anything for purely altruistic reasons, but my early upbringing in the world of politics taught me that an elected official has at least some responsibility to represent the views of his or her constituency. A recent poll suggests that Specter's recent actions are doing just that, with Democrats and Independents (who by the way, represent the winning majority in a statewide general election) are far more happy with him than are the rapidly dwindling numbers of right-wing registered Republicans desperate to do their part to make their party little more relevant than the Constitution Party . This is what marks the strange colors that political irony can come dressed in. Regardless of whatever self-serving personal political calculations may have gone into Specter's decision, he made the sort of move that others have made in the past, abandoning a long-held political affiliation when that political apparatus to which he was connected finally and completely abandoned and rejected him. He had the room to do so because of a wealth of polling information suggesting that the general election voters responsible for putting and keeping him in office (the only people, in fact, to whom he must eventually answer) actually support him far more than they do the nominal candidate that his own party was anxious to run against him...

Arlen Specter was one of the few things the Republic-Fascist party had going for it in terms of reaching out to the larger American community that simply hasn't been buying its strange Pharisee/money-changer base over the last couple of election cycles. Despite all of his faults, he turned out to be an unrecognized marker on their trail back to electoral success. Specter won't be all that much of a meaningful pickup for the Senate Democratic caucus, but his loss to the Republican party is a rich, colorful irony...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:18 PM 0 comments

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Wherein We Discuss Why Appointed Positions Aren't "UnFilled" 

...one of the interesting side stories that is percolating to the surface in this situation where we are faced with trying to figure out whether or not to freak out about this new swine flu outbreak is the factoid that Obama's Department of Health and Human Services has a number of leadership positions that haven't been filled by Senate confirmation, including...OMG...the Secretary of HHS. It's a silly and dangerous observation and a place that you would think responsible journalists who both understand how the Federal government works and understand their ethical responsibility to avoid unnecessarily burdening an already battered American populace with unnecessary stress would try not to go, but you would be wrong - probably because you got bumped off the track by that "responsible" part...

I've heard or read the mention of this "HHS doesn't have all its people in place to address this looming threat" theme a few times today, but since Politico decided to headline and lead the above-linked story with that theme, let's refer to them for the purposed of this exercise (after all, any link, like publicity, is good, right?). One of the things that those who choose to engage in a career of purveying half-truths, occasionally poorly-researched observations, and politically-motivated personal opinions masquerading as objective reporting - that is, political reporters - don't seem to understand in the same way that those who choose three or more decades of Federal service do understand is that the Federal bureaucracy, being something like a force of nature, often operates under the terms of the laws of nature. One of the primary laws to which that bureaucracy adheres is that old favorite "Nature abhors a vacuum", and this is where the implied message that all those key positions are 'unfilled' comes seriously adrift...

While it is possibly true that the appointed position of Assistant Deputy Associate Undersecretary of Health and Human Services For Lunchroom Vending Machine Concessionaire Management may be vacant, posing a disquieting threat of candy shortages in lunchrooms throughout the Department, any position that matters has a person filling that slot, because the vacuum must be filled. Those people are called "Acting", they usually have full authority to carry out the duties of the job, and they are usually - and in the case of political appointee positions, almost always - sufficiently qualified or even more qualified to do the job than whatever political appointee who eventually moves into the office. Even if they may not be more qualified - as may be the case with the acting Secretary of HHS, who is a Bush appointee and essentially an accountant - they stand on the shoulders of a career staff that make all the recommendations on which they need to act...

It's the worker bees that matter, not the political appointees, when the alarms go off; that's where 'journalists' who have no experience in or understanding of what actually goes in in the trenches of Federal bureaucracy in a government not controlled by the late and profoundly unlamented Bushco regime miss the point. The Politico story makes sure to mention that the Director of the Centers for Disease Control is merely a hole-filler, but what that report fails to mention is that acting CDC director Dr. Richard Besser bumped up to that job from his position as head of CDC's public health emergency preparedness and response section, which would seem to be a critical skill to have in this particular circumstance. It also fails to mention that there even is such a thing as an acting Surgeon General; there is one, however, and his name is Rear Admiral Steven K. Galson and he has a career's worth of medical experience and did work as an epidemiological investigator for the CDC...

Most Executive departments, as well as the agencies that are their component parts, are devilishly complex entities that rely on a combination of Administration direction and the skill and experience of career employees to function. All up and down the line, there are always positions that are "unfilled" and rely on somebody moving up from below to fill in as an 'Acting'. These are less violent civil service versions of the sorts of battlefield promotions that have made for such stirring military stories over the last couple of centuries of American history. That's the way it works; people step up and get on with it until such time as circumstances present an appointed leader to move into that particular box on the org chart. It isn't necessary that a given president's people are 'in place'; it only matters that the people who are 'in place' are competent to provide advice to Executive leadership and follow the president's direction. Put quite simply, there usually aren't - and in this case certainly aren't - much in the way of "holes"...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:33 PM 0 comments

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