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

Friday, February 11, 2005

THE COOKIE GIRLS SAGA CONTINUES

...I will confess that I was originally at least somewhat sympathetic to the unfortunate lady who suffered such trauma when the Durango, CO., cookie girls scared the daylights out of her by delivering a friendly batch of cookies at 10:30 at night, causing her to spend the next day in the hospital owing to a severe anxiety attack. I live in a remote area, and if somebody knocked on my door at that time of night and all I could see were shadowy figures flitting around, the call to 911 would only come after I had slipped a magazine into whichever weapon I though might be most appropriate for the situation. Yeah, I'm a liberal guy in most respects, but I don't see anything in the "Liberal Guy" handbook that specifically mentions firearms for self-defense and, yes, I try as hard as I can to live the sort of life that Jesus Christ would expect me to live, but while my Lord and savior said "blessed be the peacemakers", he didn't necessarily speak to the subject of making peace from a position of strength. But that all is just me...

...as I was saying, I was sympathetic to the circumstances of the injured family, at least until they began talking. Talking was their downfall. Even though the cookie girls families offered to pay all of their medical claims, the cookie victims took them to small claims court and sued for over 900 dollars in medical claims, which a Denver radio station covered in a couple of hours of drive-up donations. The couple is now concerned that their side of the story is getting insufficient coverage and they are being hounded by an ugly rain of hate mail and phone calls and even, according to them, death threats (apparently some lonely, confused people out there take their cookies seriously). The first problem arises from a quote by the aggrieved husband:

"I don't believe the girls meant for this to happen. But they could have prevented it from happening if they had just shut their mouths when they came out of court."

...problem is, they didn't open their mouths coming out of court. The initial news reporting came almost exclusively from court records, with the first quote from a principle apparently coming from Mrs. Plaintiff. To compound my dwindling 'possibles bag' full of sympathy, it turns out that the plaintiff family has a history of litigation that would make a young Perry Mason proud. They have been sued successfully or have sued (also successfully) nine times, and have two other court experiences involving restraining orders. Another restraining order episode may be in their near future, given that the parents of one of the cookie girls has asked for a restraining order to stop the harassing phone calls the family has received from the plaintiff husband since the story broke (now there's a sure-fired method of stopping all those angry calls and letters from all over the country), of which I can only think that the plaintiff family is lucky to live in a truly human, civilized area like Durango, CO, because I can think of several places where I have lived in the inland Pacific Northwest, including my hometown in Idaho, where folks would simply dispense with choosing legal action to stop bothersome phone calls and instead take a walk down the street to "have a chat" with the offending neighbor...

...this story hopefully has run its course, if everybody is lucky. I don't have any sympathy for the plaintiff family anymore. They got their money and are now suffering the slings and arrows of public disapproval that probably results from the obvious presence of too many unanswered questions. It's time to lay low and hope this whole thing can go away....
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:00 PM 0 comments
K-FALLS CRAZINESS

...26-year-old Gerald Krein is accused by the Klamath Falls police of having used the internet to line up 32 participants to implement a suicide pact on Valentines Day at his house in K-Falls. This would have to be the ultimate Chamber of Commerce nightmare if these wack-jobs had pulled this off. Imagine your choice for community image coming down to a choice between farmers and commercial fishermen fighting over irrigation water or being the place where half a Greyhound full of people came together to end it all, on Valentines Day to boot...the Jonestown of the Pacific...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:41 AM 0 comments

Thursday, February 10, 2005

BAD PILOT JOKES

...were you to ask Robert Feneziani of San Diego, he would probably wholeheartedly assure you that there are just some things you shouldn't ever joke about. This is, of course, an entirely hypothetical proposition, not because you don't know Robert Feneziani of San Diego, but because not much of anybody right at the moment is able to ask Robert much of anything because his lawyer has undoubtedly counseled him to not open his stupid trap in the presence of any person of uncertain trustworthiness. This has been a bit of a problem for Robert, a pilot for United Airlines and the New York Air National Guard, especially in 2003 when he happened to mention to a woman (who turned out to be something less than a reliable confidant) that he wanted to crash a plane - perhaps something like the passenger jet-sized air refueling tankers he flies for the New York Air National Guard - into Wall Street because of his frustration with the people who make "easy money" there. Unfortunately this little indiscretion of loose talk with unreliable listeners was only the beginning of his problems...

...during the course of the investigation that began subsequent to an unnamed woman's relating Robert's supposed threat to the FBI, attention fell on a form that he filled out for a military security clearance. It seems that he vowed on this form that he had not been arrested or involved in civil legal actions for the last seven years. This sworn statement, sadly, did not stand the test of someone in the US Attorney's office picking up the phone and making a couple of calls. It turned out that Robert had been arrested twice on misdemeanor charges - which were later dropped - and was involved in a civil court matter in 2000. As a result, Robert is now in hot water, not as yet because he chatted up the idea of nose-diving a large multi-engined jet of the sort he could easily get his hands on into the New York financial district (did I mention that the Air Guard had already taken him off flight status because of anger management problems?), but because of other problems in his life that came to light almost incidentally to the investigation of that particular bit of loose talk. United Airlines, where he apparently didn't display enough difficulty controlling his emotions to cause concern, has grounded Robert pending the results of this current investigation...

...so I'm confident that Robert, who could be facing jail and big fines for the unfortunate confusion over some of his formal responses on his security clearance request, would happily share with you the assurance that you should never, even as a joke, mention flying airplanes into buildings, especially in the presence of people who may not be getting the joke, and really especially if every little aspect of your entire life isn't tidily under control. Some jokes just aren't worth telling...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:38 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

THE PENALTY OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

...it may eventually not amount to anything, but a lawsuit filed by an Illinois couple has, to say the least, stirred a tremendous amount of attention in circles where reproductive issues are discussed. This couple, long story short, discovered that an embryo successfully fertilized in vitro had inadvertently been destroyed. Understandably angered by mishandling of a small collection of cells that they hoped could someday become their child (and one must acknowledge that they were by this time operating at the far end of the opportunity spectrum where you can actually hope to have a child of your own flesh), they found a lawyer and went to court with a wrongful death suit against the fertility clinic that had made the mistake. In order to hammer their suit into some sort of shape suitable to fit into the proper peghole of Illinois law, the judge ruled that the unattached embryo was, in fact, a human being for purposes of this suit...

...this is where the ramifications of unintended consequences comes bursting into the room like a brace of Union Pacific diesel-electric locomotives leapt from their tracks. Although some legal experts and past cases suggest that the judge’s declaration of humanity for this little lump of petri dish proto-person would be overturned on appeal, the possibility always exists that lightning might strike and the judge’s decision would be upheld (strange things sometimes happen in a court of law). The possible ramifications of such a bolt could be the end of in vitro clinics, the termination of the whole embryonic stem cell research program, and - of course - big changes in the lives of pro-choice proponents. As a parent of a diabetic child, I still hold out hope that embryonic stem cell research will eventually yield a cure for my son’s disease, given that most of those saying that there isn’t much promise in the field have their own personal meat-axes to sharpen. The one sure way to settle that argument with a final burst of uncertainty would be for the opportunity to be taken away by judicial interference enacted - in effect - through the back door. Others would suffer an even greater impact, being denied that one last chance to parent a child of their own genes through the loss of the in vitro fertilization process, and there is the impact that the declaration of human-hood to unimplanted embryos on the whole subject of abortion...

...if this couple is a cover for the pro-life movement, they have most undoubtedly in this first round hit for the cycle. At the very least, beatification by the Roman Catholic Church is a dead cinch, given that they have just about covered every Catholic reproductive taboo except birth control in this suit. If they just simply, as their lawyer insists, wanted their day in court to deal with careless reproductive technicians, then they have taken the first step to becoming an icon to the ideal that sometimes, not all the time but every so often, it’s not necessarily a good idea to let your emotions run free in the pursuit of justice, especially when the potential ramifications of your quest for justice include the denial to other couples the last-chance opportunity of in vitro fertilization, the denial of hope to parents like me who hope for nothing more than the opportunity for a cure to their child’s disease so that child can simply live a normal life devoid of syringes, finger pricks, and the need to control carbohydrate intake to a degree that robs him of the opportunity to even go to some stupid birthday party and eat hot dogs and ice cream and cake to his heart’s content like the other kids, and denying the choice for women to play a leading role in the control of their own bodies. That’s a big load to take on just because you’re pissed off at a reproductive clinic over the loss of one embryo. Hopefully, the legal experts saying the judge’s decision will be overturned are correct; the possible ramifications of a different outcome are disturbing to contemplate....
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:14 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

THIS IS WHAT YOU VOTED FOR

...last week, a coalition of western lawmakers introduced H.R. 517 and S.R. 267, each of which is intended to extend payments to rural counties who have lost their federal timber receipt payments over the last couple of decades. The purpose of the payments, first spearheaded in 2000 by Oregon's Ron Wyden and Idaho's Larry Craig, was to provide money for rural roads and schools for rural counties that have large federal landholdings and who used to receive a portion of the federal receipts earned from logging and grazing and other commodity activities in lieu of collecting property taxes on these lands (which the counties can't do). The program, which accords a federal payment equivalent to the amounts received by the counties in the late 1980's, has been wonderfully successful over the last four years, but - as an experiment - requires authorization in order to continue, which the newly-introduced legislation would extend for seven years...

...today Mark Reys, Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and the administration official responsible for the actions of the United States Forest Service (on the inside we call it USDA-FS), expressed the official administration opinion that this program should not be continued. Given that the impact of this outcome on rural counties can best be described as devastating and the initial reaction is one of outrage. After a moment of reflection, however, a certain strange bitter sort of cheerfulness begins to steal over the soul. These rural communities and counties are, bye and large, the northwestern heartland of Bush Country. They are as red as red can be, if one is forced to surrender to today's political shorthand. There is no purple on this map; the vast majority of Oregonians, for example, who reside east of the Cascade crest are Republican. All of eastern Oregon is represented by one (1) member of the House of Representatives (currently Greg Walden, a Christian broadcaster from Hood River). The district has been represented by a Republican throughout living memory; some of the incumbents served as stark ratification that it was easier to elect a dead Republican than a live Democrat in these parts (Wes Cooley comes to mind for long-time east-siders), but Republican they all have been. Today's offering from the Bush Administration is a profound and presumably painful dopeslap for a lot of folks around these parts. President Bush and the other President Cheney have both spent time here in Central Oregon over the last couple of years, speaking to the faithful in a couple of those remarkable 'invitation-only' events that have become the monocultural hallmark of this administration and - by their mere presence out here in the middle of unremarkable nowhere - earning the undying support of the faithful. Well, folks, here's your reward: the Bush Administration doesn't support payments made under the so-called Wyden-Craig Amendment (or perhaps Craig-Wyden, if you're from Idaho), but - hey - thanks for that vote last November! Maybe we'll swing by again in the next four years and you can treat us like royalty again...

...the purported reasons for the reluctance of the Administration to support these payments to provide money for hard-pressed rural schools and infrastructure are the same as for all of the new FY '06 budget cuts the Bush Monkeys are offering: we have this nasty deficit brought about at least in large part by the constant pounding of tax cuts during an economic downturn that provided relatively little relief for most common folk in Central Orygun and, of course, we are in the middle of a war that is primarily comprised of an elective invasion of another nation that didn't pose much of a threat to us or anybody else until we stuck our stick into the hornets nest and created a self-fulfilling prophecy of connections to terrorist groups. The bottom line for rural Republicans in places like Central Oregon is that you, too, can be used up and thrown away like a cheap shoe-shine rag. You voted for an administration that, in the main, is all about talk and perception and posturing laid down as a smokescreen to hide the fact that - deep down inside - nothing about this crowd and it's initiatives are about you or your concerns or needs. It's all about the aggregation of power for them, but - hey -thanks for your vote, anyway...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:35 PM 0 comments

Monday, February 07, 2005

THE STRATEGERY EXPOSES ITSELF

...it's not like we weren't warned. Grover Norquist made it quite clear some time ago that the creation of jaw-dropping deficits could all be part of a strategy to put the Federal government into a position where austerity absolutely cried out for attention, creating the opportunity for neocons to finally start taking a sharp meat axe to those aspects of government that offended them: help for the sick, the poor, the lame, halt, and blind; any sort of federal program that interfered with the ability of an honest American businessman to poison the air and water or operate in an environment unfettered by the economic, quality of life, or health concerns of whiny do-gooder citizens; or any program that in any way led citizens to support the heritage, if not the fact, of the Democratic party. With Gee Dub's newest budget, the time is obviously now...

...fully 150 programs are scheduled for elimination, from vocational training and anti-drug programs in the Department of Education to that classic neocon target of Amtrac funding. Funding cuts abound also, including farming subsidies, drug coverage for military personnel and veterans, clean air and water funding in the EPA, Medicaid payments...the mind simply reels when the entire list is presented. We are told that these sacrifices are necessary because we are a nation at war, even though we've been told over and over that the accumulation of deficits was acceptable because we were at war. All of this fails to address the root core fact that we aren't really, in any understandable sense of the term, really at war. Nothing is being rationed, massive armies aren't being raised through the draft, General Motors hasn't forsaken the output of its hugely profitable light truck manufacturing facilities in order to shift production to tanks or airplanes or Humvees or helmets or body armor, and the wealthiest amongst us reap the benefits of more than one different tax cut that primarily benefit them over the dirt-common middle class family. The prelude to the point that we have arrived at was all simply a big game, played most certainly for keeps by the shadowy mechanics and fixers in the neocon branch of the Republican party, but largely ignored for the scam that it was by the very press that - even though all of this was happening and being discussed in broad daylight - simply didn't have either the wherewithal or the courage to confront this brazen shell game that was being played out for us rubes of the general public...

...the game is fully afoot now, however, with the new budget. The most interesting aspect of this gambit is how Republicans Congressmen - presumably still interesting in further electoral success - will handle the discovery that they are running the risk of somewhere down the road facing only the options of hanging or a firing squad. Some mumbling has already been heard from farm-state Republicans today, and I could have sworn I heard Saxby Chambliss on NPR coming dangerously close to biting the hand that feeds him. They're concern is understandable because the negatives are starting to circle around them like wolves just outside the glow of the campfire light; their president is proposing cuts in Agricultural funding that will threaten - if not actually harm - their constituents just as the raging debate over PRIVATIZATION of Social Security and the potential dangers that poses for older recipients - who abound in farm states - is beginning to break through the background noise. These folks didn't get to Congress by being politically stupid...ok, so maybe some of them did, but their handlers didn't, and they can easily see the cracks in the walls that even a half-bright Democratic opponent with a decent amount of cash could profitably exploit...

...this budget go-around promises to be a bumpier ride than anything we've seen in quite some time. There won't be any of the sort of manufactured dramatics of Clinton/Congress standoff in 1995, when the government was shut down and folks like me got a three-week paid vacation, because one party has control of both the throttle and the steering wheel in this case. The natural tension between a termed-out President and Republican members of Congress looking at election - all of them in the House and many of them in the Senate - during the next election cycle will make for an interesting show. This could end up being more fun than any of us though we were going to have when the sun came up last November 3rd....
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:25 PM 0 comments

Sunday, February 06, 2005

SO WHAT'S UP WITH THE DESCHUTES CO. DA'S OFFICE?

...if nothing else is clear, it should be completely understandable to women in Oregon's Deschutes County that, if you use illegal controlled substances and get pregnant, you had better get an abortion. If you don't, and you elect to carry that unborn child to term, you will at some subsequent point be indicted for delivery of controlled substances to a minor, with a prospective future filled with hard jail time and financial penalties that you won't have a prayer of paying in the whole rest of your lifetime once you get out. That's the only clear conclusion that can be reached from the Deschutes County District Attorney's office most recent action, the indictment of three women on drug delivery charges. There have been a few women across the nation who have been charged with similar offenses, but it appears that the DA's office in Deschutes County wants to take a clear and commanding lead in this particular prosecutorial field...

...this isn't a first in the "what the heck is that about" category of prosecutions by this particular DA and staff. About a year ago, three teens in three separate cars got into a racing episode. One of them, a 16-year-old girl who had only recently gained her driver's license, lost control of her car, killing her and a reluctant teenage female passenger. Even though none of the cars was in close proximity to each other (and, in fact, some testimony seemed to suggest that one of the other two drivers - both boys - may have stopped the high-speed action), the DA's office filed charges against both young men, gaining a plea bargain guilty plea from one and a conviction for the other. There was a certain small rumbling of controversy in the local newspaper's letters-to-the-editor section, with some local residents questioning whether a 6-year jail term served any useful purpose. There wasn't any huge outcry, of course, for an obvious reason: two promising beautiful young lives had been used up and thrown away, and it's not hard to imagine yourself - as a parent - in the same situation, bearing little sympathy for the young men's fate given the enduring hell you'll be facing for the rest of your life. Of course it's also the truth that people tend to become profoundly circumspect in criticizing the District Attorney. One's sense of self-preservation begins to suggest that certain risks might apply if one gets too far out in front on something like this; the mind starts picturing the remarkably frequent calls to jury duty, then maybe you begin to notice the increased frequency with which sheriff's deputies are seen cruising by the house, and then there's that inexplicable traffic stop where you're asked to step out of the car and a container of high-quality crack suddenly bounces on the pavement between your feet....ah, the mind can spin wildly out of control with all these unlikely fantasies, but out here in the remote corners of the west there are whole clans of people who hold on with both fists to the idea that your rights as a citizen exist only insofar as the government allows them to exist. We laugh at these people and call them paranoid anti-government crazies, but, on the other hand, they would probably find a fertile recruitment ground amongst American Muslims of Middle-Eastern descent who nobody's seen for quite a while...

...perhaps what is most unsettling about this pregnant-momma trifecta in the indictment world, beyond the suggestion provided by the legislative summary that going after pregnant or new-born moms wasn't the intent of the legislation (date-rape of teenage girls, on the other hand, was, but that apparently doesn't happen in Deschutes County), is the fact that this whole thing comes out of left field. The local medical center takes blood tests if there is the suggestion of drug use by the mother; the results, if positive are turned over to the folks at the Department of Human Services, which apparently then turns information over to the District Attorney's office. One statement in the article seems particularly...well...pregnant with problems:

...(the hospital spokesman) was uncertain as to whether women in this situation are informed that they may be subject to criminal prosecution.

...well, Sparky, I'm not a lawyer, but this certainly sounds like a stone-cold dead-lock case of illegal search to me. There I am, a pregnant woman surrounded by members of the medical community, with whom - at least in some cases - I believe I have reason to trust in a confidential doctor-patient relationship, and yet - without my consent or even knowledge - certain aspects of my life are turned over to law enforcement for consideration of an indictment. It needs to be understood that I, Jack K., do not accept the use of meth or other dangerous and illegal drugs (and, no, my children and I do not have conversations about every little thing that I did in college and we're gonna keep it that way, got it?), with the possible exception of a quality blended scotch malt whiskey, under any circumstances, and am absolutely opposed to women exposing their unborn children to an uncertain and perhaps diminished life by exposure to dangerous and damaging chemicals. However, there is just something that sounds basically wrong about the medical profession being the initial evidence-collection tool for the criminal justice system, especially when the patient isn't informed about this role. The whole thing turns the medical community into a sting operation for law enforcement. Imagine that you were out with the crowd last night engaging in a bit of partying, a bit of fun, a little release from the pressures of daily life, and today you are in your doctor's office, where she decides that it's high time that you have that full blood workup you've been putting off for a couple of years so she can see how your low-density lipoproteins are doing (you not being a spring chicken anymore, if you know what I mean). A couple of nights from now you answer the doorbell at dinnertime to find a brace of law enforcement officers on the porch and several more out in the dark beyond the power of the porch light and they would like you to come along quietly...

...time and progression of these three cases through the judicial system will provide the answer to where we are headed with this thing. While we would hope that no woman would put her unborn child at risk through reckless and stupid drug use, we should also hope that the support and assistance of the medical community can be used to help her break the drug use cycle for the sake of her child, and not become simply a tool for the use of an aggressive District Attorney's office that may be operating with an eye toward something other than simple jurisprudence....
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:25 PM 0 comments

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