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

Friday, November 20, 2009

And Yet Another Example Of Wingnut Craziness 

...it probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but the suggestion offered by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver to have November 25 - the day before Thanksgiving - commemorated by Congressional Resolution as "Complaint Free Wednesday" demonstrated that A) it is a fool's errand to underestimate the fervor with which the winger right will cling to the only strategy that it has these days and, II) some members of the Pharisee component of the wingnut Right should either abandon their pretense of connection to Christianity or start reading their Bibles a little more closely to at least make a show of trying to catch up with the rest of us...but more on that in a moment...

Rep. Cleaver's resolution would seem, on the one hand, to be just a little bit of overkill. After all, the very next day is generally designated by cultural fiat to be intended to serve a similar purpose. Aside from the grim reality of a Cleveland Browns/Detroit Lions game being this year's pre-feast football entertainment, we all are supposed to understand that this is the day where we assess those temporal blessings that we do have, however few they may be, and be thankful for them. On the other hand, it is arguable that a separate day set aside to just simply not complain and instead take stock of the ledger of one's life in preparation for a celebration of thanks (aside from that Browns/Lions matchup, of course) is a moment unto itself that is worthy of consideration. The two events that anchor the Christian calender - Christmas and Easter - have precursor days that set up the theme of those events (Christmas Eve and Maundy Thursday/Good Friday). Why can't a secular holiday like Thanksgiving have a precursor day, too?

The apparent answer from the right wing, if the response to Rep. Cleaver's suggestion is an accurate reflection (and there's no history to argue that it isn't), is a resounding "NO". The 'outraged response' quotes in the story are instructive in their own right, demonstrating beyond any question that an otherwise unobservant public might have that the whining is a strategy rather than a response. What is even more instructive, however, is this sort of comment:
"I want you to show me where in the Bible it says I shouldn't complain. I haven't seen anything where Jesus asked us not to complain."

It's actually a little disappointing to see the failure of a Methodist minister to offer a more robust rebuttal of this misguided wingnut argument. "The Bible" actually has a couple of examples of situations where Jesus by word or parable told those around him (and presumably us, by inference) to not complain:

The parable of the vineyard workers recorded in Matthew 20: 1-16

Jesus dining with "the sinner" Zacchaeus the tax collector in Luke 19: 1-9

The parable of the lost son in Luke 15: 11 - 32

And, of course, various parts of the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew , such as Matt. 5: 5 and 5: 9, along with Matt 7: 1-6

If you claim that you can't find anywhere in the Bible where Jesus in one way or another told you not to complain, you might want to consider going out and buying a Bible so you can actually read it...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:20 PM |

Friday, November 13, 2009

Playing The Rubes 

...there has been a lot of commentary today about the revelation that the Republican National Committee has, for the better part of the last two decades, offered its employees a health care plan that included coverage for elective abortions, even though the RNC has opposed this particular concept since just after God made dirt. What all of the winger outrage and the wild flailing of RNC Chairman Michael Steele's efforts at damage control, one fact simply refuses to disappear...

The Republican National Committee knew - or should have known - what was covered by the insurance plan that it contracted with CIGNA to provide. It is simply impossible to believe that the RNC has been such a slipshod organization over the last two decades that it wasn't capable of engaging in the simplest act of actually reading up on the terms and conditions of the employee health care plan that it was paying for. The last eight Bushco years clearly demonstrated that the people who had their hands on the wheel of the Republican party weren't interested in doing much more than paying lip service to the concerns of the Republican "base", and it may even go deeper than that. What we know is that this elective abortion coverage goes as far back as the administration of George H. W. Bush; what we don't know is how much farther back the coverage extends...


For any social conservative who understands the presentation of health care plans and who can do the math, this has to be a really bad day. At the very least, today's revelation says that the Republican leadership is insufficiently sophisticated and informed about health care issues to be trusted with making the big decisions that actually matter; at the worst, today's revelation demonstrates that the RNC has been playing its base for rubes for the last 18 years by making all sorts of anti-choice noise while at the same time offering its own employees the sort of health benefit that only liberals - and the majority of Americans - could love....

Based on the rhetorical history alone, it is impossible to contemplate a Republican party leadership that doesn't know exactly what is in the health care plan for its National Committee employees. That's what makes this such a great story; they knew. They've always known, even back in 1991. From then until now, the reality-based branch of the Republican party has been reflected in the health care plan offered to RNC employees and it is only now that the wingnut Tea-Bagger branch that has recently decided that it is destined to be the salvation of the Grand Old Party has discovered the truth about the national committee...

They're all rubes....
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:27 PM |

DARN That Librul Media! 

...any whining you may have heard in the past from Moose Hunt Barbie about the vicious partisan attacks launched against her by that left wing harpy Katie Couric or the supercilious dismissiveness of the well-known Commie fellow traveler Charlie "In What Way" Gibson is about to be joined by a new round of whining about this mean-spirited partisan hatchet job just administered by those Socialist lackey fact-checkers at the Associated Press...

The notion that Palin might take the opportunity in her new ghost-written autobiography (or manifesto or fantasy tome or quasi-historical novel or whatever it is) to stretch, twist, and hammer previously recognizable facts into some dark one-off doppelgänger of the truth shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone who has been more than a casual observer to this strange trailer trash soap opera to which we've been subjected over the last 15 months. Mishandling facts has been an occupational disease afflicting politicians of all stripes on this continent that may well date back to the first efforts of the Clovis people to elect clan leaders, but it has seemed to pass from avocation to vocation for politicians like Palin and others in this generation of Fox News Republicans who have come to understand that "The Message" is the 'truth' for The Base, regardless of what the truth actually is. Even beyond that, this right wing Fox News generation has had a pretty good run on the national media stage, where every absurd commentary and insane statement has been reported by the MSM in a straightforward fashion as if any of these ramblings actually had traction with a meaningful percentage of the population - which, in almost every case - they didn't...

It's actually a bit of a surprise that the AP has engaged in this bit of fact-checking, given the fact that its own Washington bureau has struggled mightily over the last 18 months (and has far too often failed) to stand up straight enough for the top of its collective head to hit the "You Must Be This Tall" line on the sign next to the entrance to the Edward R. Murrow Memorial Room Of Big Boy Fourth Estate Journalism. For whatever reason, though, the AP did actually slap on that Groucho Marx false nose and eyeglass disguise to trick the book distributor into giving it a pre-release copy of Palin's book, saving you and me from the grim prospect of actually having to sacrifice a good 45 minutes of our remaining time on earth sitting in a quiet corner of our local Big Box Book Store paging through this book before slipping it back onto the "New Release" display, only slightly worse for wear (after all, somebody has to do that whole 'book break-in' thing for all those wingers unfamiliar with the concept). For that effort, I'm grateful to the AP, even though I suspect that the effort is little more than snatching at low-hanging fruit rather than some sort of sea change in how the AP views its responsibility as a journalistic endeavor. After all, how do the Powers That Be at the Associated Press explain their general failure to so publicly fact-check the works of Ann Coulter back in the day when she actually seemed to matter?

The AP is going to find itself flung into the Flaming Pits Of Hell into which all liberals - especially including all members of the media who don't have right wing talk show cred, despite a history of uncritical reporting of right wing swill - will be sent when the True Believers finally gain ascendency. The AP certainly doesn't deserve such a horrible fate - based on the overall body of its faithful work - but this particular fact-checking moment challenges the Sarah Palin story line in which the crazy side of winger world is so strongly invested, so the AP will have to live with the ignomny of being part of that ugly hateful librul media...at least for now...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:08 PM |

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Taking Bets On How This Ends 

...it isn't really much of a surprise that Reuters is reporting that Lou Dobbs is set to announce that he's leaving CNN. He has become almost a caricature of his own self with his passionate ranting about all those evil brown people streaming across our southern border and - demographics being what they are - his going-away party at CNN's world-wide headquarters probably won't be all that tearful an affair.

What is left unreported in this news flash is what ol' Lou's future plans might be. I've got "FAUX News" and the points. Any takers?
Posted by: Jack K. / 4:20 PM |

Thursday, November 05, 2009

A Fond Look Back At The Bush Administration 

...there are very few reasons to reminisce about the late and generally unlamented disaster that was called the administration of George W. Bush. History will probably show those eight long years to be a grim joke played on American citizens by a feral band of yes-men, fixers, and hustlers who never encountered any national issue - either great or small - that thew couldn't twist around into some pure raw financial windfall for the benefactors and patrons that essentially bought Bushco's ticket into the White House. There is, however, at least one reason to look back fondly on that era, especially the period after September 11, 2001:

At least during that era, we could live with the comfort of Dick "Big Dick" Cheney being incommunicado, hiding out in one or another "undisclosed location". Yes, there was the occasional muttering, angry emergence on some Sunday political show, looking for all the world like one of those 'world of nature' movies where one of Jacques Cousteau's divers would get too close to a moray eel fetched up in some coral hidey-hole, but for the most part we didn't have to listen to ol' "Big Dick" all that much. Now that he is free of the strictures of spending all of his time underground, all that is over and that's a darned shame, because these days you can't swing a dead possum without hitting a podium behind which cranky ol' 'Big Dick' is looming, carrying on about the failure of courage the Obama administration is showing over the conflict in Afghanistan...

It is ever so slightly possible, if you will grant me this indulgence, that we wouldn't be in the leaky boat we are in right now if Bushco principles like 'Big Dick' had decided to express as much concern over "winning" the war against Terra in Afghanistan way back in 2002 or 2005 or 2008 as they - and he - are now. These days, we seem destined to be graced with repeated calls for massive infusion of troops to Afghanistan by one of the primary architects of the abandonment of our earlier efforts in Afghanistan in order to invade a sovereign nation that posed the unspeakably terrifying threat of launching paper mache remote-controlled UAV's laden with nuclear chick pea bombs from rogue Iraqi garbage scows anchored off the Eastern Seaboard.

Or something like that...

Why we even need to be exposed to the likes of 'Big Dick' Cheney at all when it comes to the very military action in Afghanistan that he readily abandoned in lieu of the much more profitable invasion of Iraq over six years ago is a question for historians to sort out. All we can know is that we should look back fondly on the last administration if only because we didn't have to listen to 'Big Dick' Cheney's mewling half-witted nonsense like we do these days...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:36 PM |

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

As We Consider Why MSM Themes Matter More Than Reality 

...all you need to know, as far as the MSM is concerned, is that Obama has suffered a stinging defeat for his hoped-for agenda, all because a really lousy candidate for Governor of Virginia got the stuffing beat out of him and a sitting Governor of New Jersey who suffered from a certain personally profound unpopularity failed in his effort to secure a second term. On the other hand, as of this moment, the MSM is for some reason refusing to discuss the fact that the race for the seat in New York's 23rd Congressional District is going to be won by a Democrat for the first time since God made dirt...

It's an interesting view of analysis, or at least what passes for analysis in these latter days of the decline of Main Stream Media as a real live Fourth Estate. The bottom line in tonight's elections is pretty simple, however. The Democrats just lost two Governor's offices to Republicans who will immediately begin cutting taxes for the rich and eliminating programs and reducing services for everybody else, a prospect to which I say "Good; maybe even Great!" I have long been a disciple of de Tocqueville's long-ago observation that “in a democracy, the people get the government they deserve" when it comes to state and local elections. If all those de-energized '08 Obama voters in New Jersey and Virgina want to send him a message by sitting on their hands this time around, they can now check off that "mission accomplished" box and live with the consequences for the next four years...

On the other hand, in the in-focus race that really mattered up in New York's North Country, the much- discussed power of the tea baggers to bring the Republican Base back to majority dominance has resulted in a Democrat winning the seat for the first time since the end of the Civil War. The tea baggers weren't really interested in talking about those two governor's races because they are sufficiently sentient to grasp the difference in power balance between holding a Governor's office and holding a seat in either the US House or US Senate. New York's 23rd District mattered in a way that no Governor's election ever could because the 'baggers understand that it is only within the halls of Congress that they can achieve their ultimate goals of nation-wide political and social change...

...and they failed. They lost every which way and managed to construct a narrative for the New York 23rd special election that will provide future generations of political operative with a manual on either how to - or how not to - throw away a clear poltical advantage, depending on which way those future generations want to swing. What they didn't do was demonstration how to win when competing outside their weight class...

We may well not here much about that tomorrow, though, because the MSM is clearly so anxious to construct a theme addressing the decline of the influence of the current president. That theme construction will be manifested by the loss of two formerly Democratic Governorships, while the loss of one more Republican seat in the House of Representatives - which just yesterday was going to be its own manifestation of the rising power of the tea bagger right with Hoffman's inevitable victory - will be lost in all that other noise about how the loss of the Governorships in...wait for it now...New Jersey and Virginia...spin out the threat of eventual DOOM for the current administration...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:17 PM |

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Tonight We Are All Ducks 

...I'm not even an Oregon native, but I chose to endure the slings and arrows hurled at me by both Mrs. Jack K and others because of my decision to stay home - rather than attending a long-scheduled church function - to watch one of my adopted Orygun teams play the hated University of Southern California Trojans in the raucous confines of Autzen Stadium tonight...

The root circumstances of my boosterism are somewhat ironic, given that I lived and worked for several years within the direct local Duck sphere of influence and, during that tour, I terrorized my Duck-loving coworkers by spending every football season week wearing a baseball cap of the team that Oregon would be playing that Saturday. It worked as a bit of workplace harassment back then because the Ducks weren't a very good team; sometimes the Civil War game against Orygun State (which I also root for these days) was a contest to see who could finish the season with at least one Pac-10 win...

Things are a lot different than they were twenty years ago in the bad old days. Regardless of the native differences of current residents, we are all Ducks tonight...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:29 PM |

Partial Scores: Teabagger Wingnuts 1, Republican Sanity O 

...this afternoon saw a huge victory for those rock-ribbed forces of ideological purity in the Republican party, as the Republican nominee in the special election for the Congressional seat in New York's 23rd district abruptly withdrew from the contest after virtually every big name from the party's right wing swarmed into the state in support of her right-wing opponent running as a third party candidate. Regardless of the outcome of Tuesday's election, this is a huge victory for the Beckian teabagger wing of the Republican party, and probably not all that bad an omen fo.r the rest of us...

Dede Scozzafava's self-defenestration isn't all that surprising, given the fact that every failed loser and overly pumped-up unelected who-said of the teabagger wing of what was once an actual national party seemed uncommonly anxious to trample over any little old ladies or children standing in the way of their wild stampede down various jetways to catch flights to Oswego or Watertown. She actually did something that has become an uncommon grace for Republicans: she did the honorable thing for the sake of a party that clearly has no interest whatsoever in welcoming anyone into its tent who doesn't cleave to a particularly twisted sort of political philosophy. This moment is, all by itself, a Big Win for Beck and Limbaugh and Palin and all those other folks who have captured the hearts and minds of a particular constituency but haven't actually won anything for a lot longer than most people realize...

The incumbent that Scozzafava hoped to replace was a relatively moderate Republican serving in a district that Obama won in 2008 and was selected by Obama to serve as Secretary of the Army. How her withdrawal affects the upcoming election will only be answered on Tuesday, although it should be noted that the local Republican party felt that she, a hated RINO in the eyes of the massed forces of outsiders who stormed into the contest, was the best candidate in the context the political reality of the district. The special election will be an interesting event to observe in its own right, but this strange moment of political theater is, all by itself, instructive of the direction the Republican party is headed...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:52 PM |

Friday, October 30, 2009

Reform And My Half A Loaf 

...it's all too easy to be disappointed and angry -even bitterly so - at what appears to be just another massive el foldo job by Congressional progressives in the sausage-making exercise that is the effort to craft health care reform. It is becoming clear that there won't be any such thing as a robust public option included in whatever bill finally is voted on; in fact, the possibility exists that there won't ever be a vote on the Senate floor for any bill that has even the slightest whiff of a public option, if the public musings of Joe Lieberman (for whom there is no longer any reason for Senate Democratic Caucus members to resist the urge to physically hurl out the door) are any judge...

I find myself perfectly bifurcated on this subject. On the one hand, I care about what happens to people and I want to see every American - regardless of means - have access to health care. For my whole adult life, I have seen (and railed against the necessity for) coin jars sitting at checkout counters in virtually every little small town I've lived in with the picture of somebody who couldn't otherwise pay for an available disease treatment. I once stood in the parking lot behind the Elks Lodge in John Day, Orygun for an hour after work (no, I'm not a member; it also served during the day as the parking lot for the office where I worked) arguing with a strongly libertarian coworker about the pure failure of morality that was represented by a circumstance where the health care system in the richest, most powerful country on this planet forced families to essentially grovel in the public square for money on behalf of loved ones (all too frequently children) to pay for potentially life-saving medical treatments that were readily available - as long as they could be paid for. There was, I argued that night and have argued to this day, no possible way for this country to lay claim to the title of "Greatest Nation in the World" as long as coin jars next to cash registers hold the last desperate, singular hope for survival for any American citizen. That is the obscene reality of health care coverage as we now know it, and that is the reason we need a robust public option...

On the other hand, I am the parent of a teenager who is a Type I diabetic. Talk about the absolute king hell master of preexisting conditions. Because I can shelter my two children for only so long with my FedBorg "gold-plated" insurance, I have reason to be concerned about my second-born child's access to health care insurance that will mitigate the otherwise outrageous cost of insulin and test strips and all the other little bits and pieces required to make for a sustainable life. Even without the public option, the various proposed reform bills promise a far better future for my second-born child than what now passes for the current world of health care insurance, one where my younger child might never be able to find insurance under any circumstances. Some sort of strong public option would be better for him than what the various bills in play will offer, but that clearly isn't going to happen, so he - and I - are faced with that proverbial Half A Loaf. I will be forced to be grateful to get to that insufficient point, because it is so much better than the current grim reality of the unavailability of health insurance at any price that my son will otherwise face. The way this whole debate is playing out still sucks, though...and it really sucks because the Beaten Dog Democrats on the progressive side of the caucus are the legislators who have decided to ensure that my son and I need to be happy with that half a loaf...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:19 PM |

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