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

Friday, December 04, 2009

What The Start Of A Bad Day Looks Like 

...an on-call Portland, Orygun, police officer who lives in the somewhat far-flung suburb of Damascus walked out of his house yesterday morning and started his unmarked Portland Police Bureau (PPB) Chevy Impala to warm it up, went back inside to get his child, and came back out to find a warm spot on the driveway where his official police vehicle used to be...

The "good news" for the as-yet unnamed PPB officer is that the vehicle has been recovered elsewhere in Clackamas County (condition as yet unknown). The "BAD NEWS" for said unnamed PPB officer comes from the tenth page of this PPB document issued earlier this year under the signature of his boss, Portland Chief of Police Rosanne S. Sizer:
Never leave your car running or the keys in the ignition when you’re away from it, even for “just a minute.”

As a general rule, you can suspect right up front that any morning during which your car disappears from your driveway has all the makings for the start of a bad day. That particular fact aside, walking out the door to find an empty rectangle of melted frost on the driveway tracing out the spot where the city-owned vehicle that your boss says shouldn't ever be left idling unattended was left sitting idling unattended pretty much sends the message that you are about to have a Bad Day...

This is pretty much what "sucks to be you, man" looks like...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:44 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

The New War Between The States 

...if the Evergreen State shared a border with Arkansas, there would be a border fence going up right now, complete with armed guard towers having interlocking fields of fire and crossing points staffed with National Guard rifle platoons. Thankfully for the beleaguered Washington taxpayers, they are separated from A Place Called Hope and all the rest by a couple of time zones and a good portion of fly-over country, so Washington Governor Christine Gregoire simply saw fit today to instruct the Dept. of Corrections to deny acceptance of any Arkansan parolee...

Arkansan corrections authorities, of course, are honoring the memory of former Governor Mike Huckabee by noting that they did nothing wrong in the instance of formerly alive alleged cop-killer Maurice Clemmons. They certainly understand how folks in Washington might be a bit miffed at that former governor's claim that a needless tragedy was cause in part by a failure of the Washington legal system, but as far as they are concerned they did everything by the book so none of this is their fault. The folks in Washington feel the same way, too, and I'm just enough of a parochial little PacNW hayseed to suspect that the Left Coasters may have prior claim to that particular high ground, because my admittedly biased reading of the various stories about Gregoire's order suggests that Washington state was facing a somewhat limited series of options because of the failure of Arkansas officials to take specific actions...

Having said that, there is clearly enough blame to go around regarding the question of why this guy was even walking the streets to begin with. None of it should detract from the plain fact that Mike Huckabee has once again proven that he is a dark, dangerous gift that keeps on giving in more ways than could ever be imagined...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:18 PM 0 comments

Monday, November 30, 2009

When Which Critics Matter 

...for all it's many, many faults as a supposed journalistic enterprise, Politico can probably be forgiven today's effort regarding Mike Huckabee's prominent role in the killing of four police officers just down the road from Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base on Sunday. As a generally right wing mouthpiece that once every great long while is the blind pig finding an acorn, it is probably understandable that the Politico editors would focus on the spittle-flected outrage of Malkin and the RedState gang whose readers are its natural constituency. The reporting misses the point that a great many commentators on the left have expressed similar sentiments over the last 24 hours, but it tells the important story...

If you were hoping that there would come a moment where you didn't run the risk of stumbling across the Right Rev. Michael Huckabee pontificating all over your 46" 1080p screen in the unfortunate event that you stumbled across his FAUXNews program, that hope was dashed somewhere between his commuting the sentence of accused shooter Maurice Clemmons in 2000 and yesterday's tragedy. The fact that he created his own second "Willie Horton" moment (Wayne DuMond being the first) with his Clemmons clemency decision virtually guarantees that you will have Mike Huckabee to 'kick around' on the multimedia display screen of your choice for many years to come. And that is why the Politico focus on the winger outrage can be given a pass in this instance...

Mike Huckabee is done - seriously "stick a fork in him" done - as far as national, regional, or local political campaigning is concerned. Aside from the fact that not even the most ardent Pharisee winger conservatives in Spokane or Deer Park or Dayton or Ellensburg or any other conservative stronghold in Washington state would ever vote for him after that lame 'failure of the Washington judicial system' he trotted out today, the simple fact is that Mikey is toast with the Republican base. Those previously mentioned winger mouthpiece outlets are doing the work that lefties fearful of Huckabee's comfortable glibness could never hope to get done: they are tearing down whatever credibility Huckabee could ever hope to have as a serious candidate for national office as a clear result of his failure as the sort of 'law and order' kind of guy that the Republican base could get behind. These critics - and Politico - are showing a moment when which critics matter...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:51 PM 0 comments

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