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

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Why Huckabee Should Never Be In The White House Without A Visitor's Pass 

...there has been WAY too much discussion about Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize over the last couple of days, most of it by people who couldn't at gunpoint name the last five Nobel Peace Prize winners in any case. The bottom line of this whole episode is simply that a small gaggle of people who live in a place that looks a lot like Alaska if you subtract all the crazy wingnuts and the stain of a recent governorship decided on a recipient for reasons of their own. That particular fact, all by itself, makes former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's most recently reported comment a pure demonstration of Republican failure:
"[T]he better response," Huckabee insisted, "is simply to allow those on the left to explain what he did in his first two weeks as President that merited such recognition."

In an otherwise perfect world, the line of "those on the left" willing to rise to this challenge would probably circle the globe - at the equator - a couple of times. If this otherwise glib and humorous darling of a certain sect of the Pharisee right would have broadened his challenge to the moderate and liberal Christian community (instead of limiting it to his world view of Godless Naziocommunist lefties), that line could probably extend from here to the moon, were there only enough space suits to go around...

Huckabee can pull off the appearance of being an engaging guy who is bright enough to engage in pleasant conversation, but his current role as a FAUX talking head is exposing some serious intellectual flaws in his game plan for being a meaningful player in the next presidential election cycle. The above-referenced quote is a prime example of the fundamental problem of gravitas that Huckabee faces: insofar as the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize is concerned, "those on the left" have nothing to explain. We on the left didn't name Obama the Peace Prize winner; we on the left didn't nominate Obama for the Nobel Peace Prize; there are plenty of "those on the left" who are just as dismissive of this particular award as most of the talking heads on the right such as Huckabee, although - unlike Mike - they are able to actually articulate well-thought-out objections in complete sentences...

"Those on the left" have nothing to explain. "Those on the left" didn't nominate or vote for Barack Obama in the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize contest. The only people who have any explaining to do are those on the right, like Mike Huckabee, who have become such hopelessly lost souls obsessed with the quest for power as its own reward that they will challenge anything that is - in its own right - good for this country...

Maybe Mike can explain how Henry Kissinger (1973) is the most recent Republican winner and Theodore Roosevelt (who wouldn't even be allowed in the door of any Republican caucus these days) is the only other Executive Branch Republican to win the prize (as opposed to Obama, Carter, and Gore over the last seven years). Perhaps Mike, with all of his seminary training, can explain why his people can't seem to rise to the occasion and practice what Jesus preached sufficiently to earn the Prize. If he can't do so, the only way he should ever gain access to the White House is as part of a tour group, because he just simply isn't good enough be there any other way...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:19 PM 0 comments

Friday, October 09, 2009

Sometimes I Sits and Thinks... 

...and sometimes, as Satchel Page so famously said, sometimes I just sits. There's a framed poster-sized version of this quote displayed over a luridly-drawn poster of a red bar stool that has hung in the master bathroom of every place I've lived over the last 27 years courtesy of Mrs. Jack K. (I like to think of it as part of her dowry). Today, with the announcement of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner and the subsequent reaction, reaction to reactions, and reactions to those reactions to the original reactions, I've found that that both just sitting and sitting and thinking have their own singular values in trying to work through the various wars that the left and right are waging against each other and themselves...

Today's chronology of events is straightforward and - at the same time - fascinating in its display of emotional color. First came the announcement; then came a remarkable variety of reactions, including disparaging comments by spokesmen for the Afghan Taliban, Hamas, as well as from Michael Steele , the Chairman of the Republican National Committee and a gift that should well keep on giving and giving to the Democratic Party. All of this was followed by a response by a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, which was itself followed by Update/Postscript chidings by Progressive Intertubes Icon Glenn Greenwald and other lesser but highly visible commentators (this link being just one example) directed against the DNC's response and anyone who, for whatever reason, supported that bit of aggressive language...

In those moments when I sits and thinks, I can understand the revulsion that Greenwald and other progressives are expressing toward a piece of DNC commentary that appears to reek of the same sort of 'fer us or agin us' chatter that Americans faced through most of the duration of the Siege On Sensibility that was the presidency of George W. Bush. Throughout the desperate bulk of that horrible time, honest country-loving patriots who only wanted this country and its citizens and government to be the best that they could be were branded as traitors because they didn't toe some twisted, self-serving line that Bushco had drawn for reasons that only our children - or their children - will truly have sufficient purchase of a host of too many still-secret facts to be able to understand. At first glance, those Progressives who object to the DNC engaging in the same sort of rhetoric that sent too many of us flocking to official Canadian government websites looking for immigration info during those dark Bushco years seem to be making a powerful argument for the return of decency to our national political discourse...

But, as I sits and thinks, I wonder: how is it that there are so many voices on the left decrying the DNC saying that the Republican party has thrown its lot in with the Taliban and Hamas concerning this Peace Prize thing while, at the same time, there isn't a whisper of objection to Rep. Alan Grayson's observations about the Republican health care 'plan' being to "not get sick" or "die quickly"? How is it that one particular example of intentionally inflammatory language - drawing an obvious connection between anti-Obama comments by American antagonists and the Republican party - is a bad thing that we should be big enough to get beyond while another example of intentionally inflammatory language - positing that the Republican health care plan consists entirely of the idea tha they want us to die quickly - is an example of Democrats finally 'growing a spine'?

When I just sits, all of this current kerfluffle makes for great television. When I sits and thinks, however, I have to wonder why - in the eyes of some lefties - Alan Grayson is the hero and the DNC is the goat...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:17 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

What Really Makes Beck Cry 

...it's only another snap shot, reflecting one racing leg of a marathon that has most of its miles left to be run, but this is the sort of thing that should probably make Glenn Beck cry real tears:
AP Poll: Obama's job approval rises amid concerns

More than anything else, the month-by-month trend of this poll suggests that all Roger Ailes's horses and all of Roger Ailes's men can't put together an attack that sticks, besides all their efforts to the contrary. There are plenty enough complaints about the direction in which we are heading as a country from both sides of that mythical political divide and there are plenty enough cable news pundits available to offer critical declamations about the failed Obama presidency with regard to the that failed direction, led by - but by no means exclusive to - FAUX News. Unfortunately for Roger Ailes, all of his investment in attempting to destroy a Democratic presidency has, over the last month of intensive effort, been of little more value than sand pounded down a rathole...

That's the sort of thing that should make Glenn Beck get all weepy for real...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:00 PM 0 comments

Sunday, October 04, 2009

Snow On Oct. 4; The Panic Sets In 

...imagine my surprise...no, check that; imagine my horror at watching snow pour down from the skies yesterday and today. Realized Winter Storm Warnings producing heavy, wet, sloppy stuff, occasionally as light showers and sometimes as full-on blizzards, until there were four inches on the ground. Now, don't get me wrong; there can be something magical about a soft white blanket of powder sparkling in all its simple purity and innocence under a dry cold midwinter sun, and I am certainly still a sucker for the simple old-fashioned idea of a White Christmas...

But...

Winter on the Eastern slopes of the Orygun Cascades can be - and usually is - a long-running event, a grueling marathon where common features like "the lawn" and "the street" are usually hidden from view by layers of snow and ice from sometime in November until early May. There are decks to shovel, a roof to rake or shovel, a snow blower to run and maintain, snow plow operators to pay (my road doesn't get plowed unless I hire someone to do it), and far too many days where my desire to own environmentally responsible daily commuter vehicles runs up against a dark passion to own a fleet of SUV's - big ones, with massively studded snow tires that spit out chunks of ice-coated asphalt like rifle bullets. Given all this, two solid days that look just exactly like winter, even though the calender says we are only in the first couple of days of October, present a truly grim prospect indeed...

Somewhere out there under the snow is the lawn-watering hose needing to be taken in for the winter draped across an expanse of grass that still needs to be mowed one last time, the furniture and barbecue on the back deck that needs to be put in the garage, downed trees that need to be cut into firewood, and the greenhouse that was still cranking out product a couple of days ago. The idea that this may be the start of winter a month and a half early is a grim prospect indeed, and Mrs. Jack K. and I have comforted each other with the insistence that this is just a fleeting winter flirtation, more a warning than a commencement...

Still, an independent observer would probably be able to see the panic in our eyes...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:11 PM 0 comments

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