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

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Time For Plan B 

...it's always good to have a plan and it never hurts, once you have that plan, to make sure to draw up a backup plan. According to documents that have come into the hands of Congressional investigators, Toyota may have had a plan to deal with unfavorable Congressional testimony regarding that little unintended acceleration problem that seemed to be plaguing several of its model lines: attack the critics. Now, there's something to be said for a strategy of attacking your critics; we lefties are all the time demanding that elected Democrats attack the usually moronic criticisms that the SCLM so cheerfully airs from right wing leaders, spokesmen, talking heads, and loose wackos roaming the airwaves. But, that is that and this is this and there is a pretty big difference between the two...

We could delve deeply into the "science vs. blathering" difference, because that's pretty big all by itself. No need, though, because what we are talking about here is the difference between some radio blowhard coked to the gills on Oxycontin fighting through the brain mists to transfer all those twisted hate-filled thoughts to his speech centers and the possibility that the subject of a Congressional investigation just might have been cogitating - at least for a while - the prospective value of going after some Congressional witnesses who disagreed with that subject's approach to solving a particular safety concern. There are, I am told, real live prison cells in the Capitol complex and - at the very least - the advertising agency executives advising Toyota would be well served by the understanding that there is little other than a can of WD-40 and a couple of overly frank emails that could spell the difference between another weekend with the trophy wife at the Hamptons beach house and cooling your heels alone with the cellar rats in a D.C. version of the Bastille, waiting for federal prosecutors to draw up witness intimidation charges that trump that Contempt of Congress vote that changed your weekend plans and put you here in the first place...

It may be some time before we understand, if we ever do, what the subject of the investigation and its paid advisers and pollsters had in mind, but it is clearly time to unlimber Plan B...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:12 PM 5 comments

Friday, May 14, 2010

Brief Thoughts On Why One May Not Tell People What One Does 

...throughout the Executive Branch of the Government of the United States, there are thousands of employees who earn their daily bread by honorably defending the interests of the American people through the administration of contracts that deliver services, supplies, and the construction and maintenance of real property. Day in and day out, they try to do the best they can to make sure that the requirements of the Federal contracts that they are charged with administering are met...

And then there's this. The real irony about this report is that the Department of Defense maintains an online site that is the go-to location for all sorts of training on how to properly administer federal contracts. In fact, this go-to DOD site is approved as a source for fulfilling the annual training requirements necessary for all Federal contract administration employees to maintain their certification to handle contracts. And yet...

And yet, it is the very Department that offers what is considered in some circles to be the definitive training on contract administration that not only can't - one more time - seem able to guarantee best value for the country but also can't provide acceptable products for the ultimate customer, which - one more time - is our own troops. Somewhere out there, somebody has the job of making sure that the production line cranking out combat helmets met the required specifications. Somewhere out there, the job didn't get done. It may turn out that the failure to meet spec's is a simple technical issue involving chin straps or some such, but at first blush this is another unnecessary black eye delivered - courtesy of DOD contract specialists - to all those other people who get the job done right every day of the week all year long, every year, with little recognition and no reward other than a paycheck...

...because that's the way this stuff is supposed to work...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:09 PM 2 comments

How Hard Can It Be? 

...I was going to make some idle sport of Sarah Palin most recent comments when I first read the AP report; you know, test out some other potential moves Obama would make if only he could, such as:
Obama would allow people to eat Christian babies if he thought he and his Democratic allies could get away with it.

Obama would gather up registered Republicans and Death March them on foot to internment camps in the New Mexico desert if he thought he and his Democratic allies could get away with it.

Obama would force all Americans to face toward Mecca and pray daily if if he thought he and his Democratic allies could get away with it.


But then, as I was reading through the story again, I realized that the back story wasn't that Palin is just running around the country saying whatever she thinks the crazy 30% of the population will eat up, or even that Palin probably wouldn't even be considered a contender for the 2012 Republican nomination if outlets like AP actually provided some sort of rational analysis to her bizarre litany of comments. No, the back story is that journalism as practiced by those razor sharp professionals of the AP is so easy that just about anybody with either sufficient fingers, toes, or elbows to type (or even a voice recognition system to provide Reasonable Accommodation in accordance with ADA) should be able to do this job to AP standards, regardless of any other training or experience...

I started getting to this point with this selection:
"...the only thing stopping Obama from gutting the Constitution's right to bare arms." (emphasis mine)

The critical issue of the right to bare arms has been discussed already during this first 18 months of the Obama regime, particularly with regard to Michele Obama's wardrobe selections. In fact, no less an elite-level journalist/blogger than Jake Tapper has weighed in on Barack Obama's own apparent beliefs when it comes to baring arms. What he thinks about firearm ownership and the meaning of the Second Amendment is less well known, but I think it's safe to say that either the unnamed AP reporter's or Palins' own wild conjecture is seriously off the mark...

But Wait, as Billy Mays used to say, There's More. Later in her speech, Palin referred to the vicious manner in which sow grizzlies defend their cubs and made a connection to Republican/Teabagger women who she said need to rise up and help take back the country. Said unnamed reporter failed to mention this connection by writing just this:
Palin challenged Republican women — "mama grizzlies," she called them — to help the Republicans "take this country back" and elect anti-abortion lawmakers.

The report, in the next sentence, offers - apparently with a completely straight, dedicated professional journalistic face - this helpful reference:
A grizzlie is a bear.

No, really, that's what the article says...

...or at least that's what it says right now, prior to some actual educated English-speaking editor frantically pulling the copy off line to fix it. I promise, I really tried to be charitable about this, but I just couldn't find my way. Aside from the fact that the reporter somehow felt it necessary to explain what a 'grizzlie' is, she or he wasn't even capable of spelling the bear's colloquial singular name correctly (that would be "grizzly' and Heaven forfend that there would have been a need to go all Latin with Ursus arctos horribilis just to make sure all y'all knew what a grizzly is), which is the sort of error than a 10-second Google search could have corrected. This is what led to my realization that Serious Professional Journalism clearly isn't as rigorous a profession as Serious Professional Journalists would like us to believe it is, especially when they are discussing the Information Age blight represented by the the unwashed vermin of blogtopia. This report represents just one example of the best work available from what is supposed to be a premier provider of straight-up Fourth Estate Media, and it should lead all the rest of us in the 'unwashed masses' bleachers to the realization that we, too, could be an AP reporter...

How hard can it be?

Update:
Screen shots, just in case the AP editors actually get around to reading a fixing the story....
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:07 PM 0 comments

Monday, May 10, 2010

My Own Private Antarctica 

...it is snowing outside. By which I mean "again". The Winter That Would Never Be has slowly morphed into the Spring That Won't Ever Come. In the larger context of the outside world, this doesn't amount to much; it's doesn't hold a candle to the reality of sitting along the Gulf Coast knowing that there is a vast slimy pool of spilled crude oil spreading across an area larger than a couple of European countries that may or may not be headed your way and having no more say in the matter than if you were duct-taped to the hood of a speeding truck barreling into some dark unknown madness...

But still, enough is enough. It's been over a month since the deadline for removal of our much-debated studded tires, yet the last vestiges of a winter that didn't amount to much keep lingering on and on. A week or so ago, my morning commute featured a several-mile-long Christmas Light Show where all manner of flashing light bars from police, emergency, Incident Response, and tow vehicles reflected gaily against the heavily falling snow, and I am certain that one Sheriff's Deputy managing the extrication of his own Crown Vic from the roadside ditch by one of those gaily flickering tow vehicles is glad that I didn't have a camera to contribute to whatever on-screen hell he will face at his next going-away/retirement/promotion party. I do, after all, know people...

Tempers are growing short, skin is growing pale, and there is a desperate darkness around the eyes of all those sun-worshiping outdoorsy types whose total buy-in on that "300 sunny days per year" Central Orygun hype is reflected by the usual seasonal ritualistic exchange of rooftop ski racks for rooftop bike racks. Those who cherish snow skiing are living in a wonderful dream world while the rest of us are trapped in a nightmare that seems to have no defined endpoint...

This, too, will pass, and not too far down the road we in this little corner of the world will be fretting over dry lightning or 8-year-olds burning ants with a magnifying glass - either one of which could end up burning down half the county - and all the talk about climate change will wander off into whatever corner such discussions go when they can't gain local traction. For now, on the other hand, it is time for My Own Private Antarctica to end...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:07 PM 4 comments

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