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

Saturday, June 06, 2009

A Final Bit Of Justice For Engine 57 

Raymond Lee Oyler stands convicted of intentionally starting a fire in the wee hours of the morning of 26 October, 2006, at the bottom of San Gorgonio Peak near the Southern California town of Cabazon during a Santa Ana wind event. By 0800 hours, Incident Command staff were aware that the five-man crew of San Bernardino National Forest Engine 57, which was engaged in structure protection in the small community of Twin Pines, had been burned over by the wind-driven maelstrom that came to be named the Esperanza Fire. All five crew members died...

Yesterday, Oyler was sentenced to death, and - in total contravention to both my carefully nurtured progressive and Christian proclivities - I said to myself "YES!". What is probably worse for the sake of both my immortal soul and my self-subscribed progressive credentials, I don't think I will ever feel bad about my reaction...

As I have previously written both here and elsewhere, wildland firefighting can be a brutally dangerous thing to do, just as the more commonly understood job of structural firefighting is dangerous. However, wildland firefighting can present some circumstances that differentiate it from normal urban/suburban structural firefighting because wildland fires - especially during the initial attack phase of urban interface fires like the Esperanza Incident that led to the Engine 57 tragedy - are frequently fought from the inside out rather than from the outside in. Instead of solely trying to deny fuel to the flame front to stem its advance, firefighters set up shop at locations near defensible homes that will sooner rather than later - in violation of any sane understanding of where a good place to be is - be right in the middle of the Beast...

Going up against the Beast belly to belly is the closest thing there is to experiencing the reality of combat without that whole 'people shooting at you' thing. The risks involved in the wild confusion of initial attack, especially in the case of structure protection, are sufficiently dire without having to fold into the mix the idea that firefighters have to be out there accepting and dealing with all those raw starkly defined dangers because somebody decided to intentionally start that fire...

Yesterday's sentencing was one small bit of final justice for Jason McKay, Jess McLean, Daniel Hoover-Najera, Mark Loutzenhiser, and Pablo Cerda and those they left behind. The crew of Engine 57 did what was expected of them. They understood and accepted that expectation, even though they shouldn't have had to be where they were in the first place were it not for some twisted obsession that we can never understand. They will always be remembered by all of us who have ever stood in the middle of some dark smokey Hell over the years and tried to do the job we were sent in there to do...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:16 PM 0 comments

Friday, June 05, 2009

Sixty-Five Years Ago Today 


...13,000 aircraft. 5,ooo ships. 160,000 soldiers...


The sheer numbers of that singular day 65 years ago are astounding, and the tens of thousands of individual stories are a precious resource that will hopefully never be lost or forgotten, even though we are losing the storytellers by the tens and hundreds every day. The morning of 6 June 1944 is the one of those very specific moments where a line can be drawn on the long scroll of history to mark where the outcome mattered to the whole world. If the Allies made it ashore to establish a defensible beachhead and begin moving inland across the Normandy countryside, it would mean the beginning of the end of Hitler's dreams of a racially pure empire. If those troops were driven back into the sea, the war would last many months - if not years - longer and, although opinions vary about the eventual outcome, the world would have been a much different place...

That is why we remember...
Posted by: Jack K. / 10:04 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Another Example Of "All You Need To Know About Republicans" 

...personally, I think Lindsay Graham sounds more like Huckleberry Hound than does Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, but regardless of all that, Graham's comment today is profoundly instructive about what should from here on out be clearly understood to the "Party of 'No'" nonstrategy of the Republic-Fascist Party":
"She needs to prove to me and others ... that, if they found themselves in litigation with a Latina woman, you fill in the blanks, that she would give you a fair shake..."

This is what conservative middle=aged white male exceptionalism looks like. Just for a moment, reflect back over the entire sad history of American jurisprudence and - just for the pure hell of it - plug a few different words in here and there in Graham's statement. Imagine for a moment the circumstances of a black man in litigation with a white man in front of a middle-aged white male judge; or imagine a Latina woman in litigation with that same guy in front of that same judge; go ahead and shoot the moon, in fact, and imagine any minority in litigation with that same white guy and that same white guy judge. Ask yourself the corresponding question: would that judge give you a "fair shake"?

The answer to these alternative scenarios has far too often been for far too long simple and stark: "No". Huckleberry Graham's supposedly heartfelt concerns about SotoMayor's judicial philosophy and temperment are stunning examples of the arrogant sense of entitlement that old white guys have accrued to themselves over the history of this great nation of ours. Privileged old white guys have been making law affecting the lives of people who are nothing like them and whose lives they could never hope to understand for over 200 years and there are more examples than any sane person has the patience to shake a stick at of situations where some non-white person came out on the short end on that same stick when the people sitting at that other desk and the robed figure up front behind that big ol' desk of power were white guys...

Huckleberry Graham's comments are a simple but telling embarrassment to any white guy of any age who aspires to be a fully actualized citizen. His observations are a clear manifestation of the inherent racism that serves as the underpinning of that hallowed "base" that Graham and other Senate Republic-Fascists absolutely must please if they want to stay on the Federal payroll in D.C. His comments after his meeting with Sonia Sotomayor have been presented without much in the way of analysis of their actual meaning. Not much analysis is necessary, however; he's telling you all you need to know about Republicans...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:15 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

What Is A Body To Do? 

...there are days - in fact there have been a lot of days recently - where the pressures and stresses of personal life have made me question the fundamental premise of whether or not it matters to care about the pressing national issues of the day. There are plenty of much more famous people, after all, who are ready, willing, and able to wring their collective hands over those national issues. There are plenty of talented writers who have the time to tolerate listening to dead-ender racists like Pat Buchanan (which came to mind only because he is over my shoulder and once again over the top on my TV), and I really appreciate their efforts because I just don't have the time and have to struggle even trying to care right now in any case...

There are still the occasional moments where I can snap out of my funk, and this news from today - which I find is being typically under-reported by the MSM - is one of them. Think about it: a 3-0 Federal appeal court decision out the the Second Circuit (including panel member Sonia Sotomayor) repudiated the SCOTUS Second Amendment ruling on D.C.' gun laws, declaring that decision not applicable to States, which D.C. ain't. Just as the Winger Wurlitzer starts cranking up the usual noise about "liberals snatching our guns out of our hands", word comes that a three-judge panel out of the Seventh Circuit arrived at the exact same conclusion, with two members of the unanimous panel being Reagan appointee's...

That whistling sound you thought you heard a moment ago was the wind going out of certain winger sails at the thought of losing the "gun rights" argument for such a simple, anti-intellectual reason as the fact that otherwise respected jurists from both sided of the philosophical aisle reject the premise that the original SCOTUS ruling applied in any context other than on Federal reserves (which Washington, DC, is). As will prove to be the case in other aspects of this silly, half-baked morality play of a nomination that is the only hope wingers seem to think they have left of regaining relevance, a sympathizer or right-wing fellow traveler would have to at some point look at at the smoking hulk of a derailment that this line of argument represents and simply ask the hopelessly whiny minority party question: What Is A Body To Do?"...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:43 PM 0 comments

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