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

Friday, July 21, 2006

The Hope Veto 

…and so it is done. The Republican party, by and large the most cheapjack band of amoral thugs, punks, and fixers ever assembled, ran the string out on their little morality play, giving some of them the opportunity to gain some “moderate” cred while letting their half-bright little prince cram a few shoring timbers into his crumbling base with a stout-hearted veto of an effort to expand federal funding rules for stem cell research. They even managed to include a media event including those precious little “snowflake” children. In fact, it looked like maybe they had rounded up the majority of the tiny little handful of children who came from donated excess embryos. Ironically, that little White House dog-and-pony show probably did more to highlight the underlying dishonesty of this twisted little kabuki they were putting on than anything else the handlers could have cooked up, with Gee Dub elegantly robed as the moral, God-fearing protector of what by and large will be treated as medical waste at the expense of the hopes of millions, not to mention –as Charlie Pierce so elegantly put it – the blood of other innocents lapping around their ankles as a direct result of Gee Dub’s actions and inaction. And, along with that, there was something missing…

I certainly don’t begrudge these stage-prop children their existence. They are a special joy and their own form of medical miracle to their parents and I would be more than happy if every in vitro embryo was brought to birth as a child. But, by a margin almost too big to express, they aren’t. They are stored; they are disposed of with little thought and no ceremony, and with them is disposed a chance, a glimmer of possibility for somebody with a life-altering, -shortening, or –stealing disease. So there was something missing in yesterday’s little media show; my child wasn’t standing in that group to help identify the real-world consequences of Bush’s little political game. The press wasn’t able to display to the world my kid stabbing his fingers four or more times a day with a lancet to draw blood for a glucose test (try it sometime, ya wuss). The cameras didn’t have the chance to capture him filling a syringe with a blend of short and long-acting insulin and injecting himself three times a day in the arm…or the stomach…or the leg. Reporters were denied the opportunity to come up with the words to describe, when Gee Dub’s little victory/veto party turned to the cake and ice cream, the look on my child’s face as he had to stand back and just look on while the other kids dug in because the goodies exceeded his carefully moderated carbohydrate count…

A memory I cannot shake: from a small age I took my son with me when I was grocery shopping (it’s a guy thing in my house). A highlight of the trip would come in the bakery section, where he got to choose one of those humongous 8-inch cookies (with chocolate chips or M&M’s or whatever) to munch on. Shortly after he was diagnosed, at age 8, we were in a local Safeway, in the bakery. I turned back from gathering my week’s supply of bagels to see him standing, head resting against the plastic front of the cookie case, looking at those treasures with a face filled with a powerful mixture of longing, disappointment, pain, and resignation that no eight-year old should ever have to even hear about, much less feel. He didn’t ask; I didn’t say anything; and the stark outlines of that first glaring moment when he was confronted with the full implication of his disease can still bring some mistiness to my otherwise manly eyes. We’ve learned to adapt and adjust; a certain reevaluation of just what exactly comprise the four food groups and what constitutes a “well-balanced meal” has allowed my kid a bit of flexibility so that he isn’t totally denied life’s treats, but even at that it’s nothing like the life that ‘other kids’ live. But it’s that one brutally indelible memory that Bush’s veto put into play, because what he vetoed was the improvement of the odds that another parent wouldn’t ever have to to live that moment…

So Gee Dub gets to play John Wayne to his base and spout inanities about moral boundaries, surrounded by a small clutch of miracle babies and at the same time blissfully relieved of the burden of a splitscreen display of all those dead Iraqi and Afghan and – now – Lebanese babies that his shifting moral boundaries have created. Bill Frist and some other Senate and House Republicans get to show prospective moderate voters how they can work both sides of the street. And millions of Americans get to find out how little their desperate little hopes and dreams for a cure matter to a Republican-led federal government when the base is in need of coddling…
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:54 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Paying to Save Your Live - Maybe Not 

...the response by the Bush administration to the evacuation need in Lebanon was already coming under criticism because of the disturbing appearance that FEMA may somehow be involved, but the nutcutting blow was when it was widely let be known that all those wild-eyed American refugees would have to fork over the AMEX card, either now or later, to cover the cost of getting them out of Dodge with fingers and toes attached. It was a breathtakingly stupid policy decision, the sort of thing that might make Americans abroad and those at home think that maybe that horrifying Republican vision of a terrorist-loving, America-hating Democratic Congressional majority looks pretty damned good after all. Karl Rove can read tea leaves with the best of them, though, and the predictable uproar and the bad pub to which such a policy was leading finally forced Gee Dub's hand. It is lately announced that American evacuees from Lebanon will not be charged for trasportation after all...

It's good that they figured this out finally, but it is just another example of the twisted attitudes of Gee Dub and his minions that they even came up with this idea to begin with, and to hell with any law that they want to cite. There are right ways to do things and wrong ways to do things. Having a law that requires payment is a wrong way. Requiring payments to get people out of harm's way is a wrong way. Just simply getting them out of there and forgetting about any sort of consideration of terms of payment - in other words, doing the right FRIGGING THING - well, that's a right way. No honor should come to Condi Rice or her faux husband for having figured this out; their original decision is an embarrassment to our country and that stain won't get fixed by this change of heart...

But at least they finally got there...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:22 PM 0 comments

Another One Bites the Dust, Ralph Reed Edition 

...OK, I suppose that it is good, on the one hand, to see that Republican voters in Georgia have some fundamental sort of scruples that might cause them to say "enough, already" and reject the idea that a bosum buddy of Jack Abramoff isn't the best candidate for Lieutenant Governor, which was Ralph Reed's goal. On the other hand, it really is a shame that the "christian" conservative vote couldn't see it's way clear to find forgiveness and send Ralph on to the general election where his curious view of ethics could be offered a wider scrutiny. Sadly for all stalwart fans of truth in advertising, that won't be happening...

“Stay in the fight. Don’t retreat. And our values will win in November...” Ralph Reed.

Yeah, well, the voters in Georgia have apparently seen all they need to see about Ralph's values and that's probably why he is going to be sitting out the big show. For progressives everywhere it would be a better thing to have amoral fixers like Ralph Reed stand for office in the general election, but that won't be happening now. It's a little bit good and a little bit bad with regard to this particular position, but at least we can rest assured that - for a few years at least - we won't have Ralph Reed to kick around any more...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:01 PM 0 comments

Monday, July 17, 2006

"I'm an American. I Have American Express" 

...my original thoughts for this post lingered around the clearly developing idea that life is cheap to the Bush administration, particularly life that isn’t Bible-thumping conservative quasi-Christian residing in southern regions of the United States. Thousands of innocent Iraqi’s have been killed in the course of Gee Dub’s Grand Iraqi Nation-Building Adventure without so much as a heart-felt apology by the current leader of the world’s only superpower that has, to one degree or another, been the agent of their deaths, and now the sudden dramatic blowup between Israel and Lebanon has led reportedly to the deaths of 200 Lebanese civilians. This number is far higher than the number of Israeli citizens who have died in the same period, but in light of the apparent Israeli strategy (assuming the Israeli leaders are somehow brighter than what we’ve got and acually have a strategy), it follows closely with the cheapness of Muslim - or at least non-American or non-Jewish - life. Rather than seeking the release of a couple of captives, the Israeli strategy seems directed toward engaging in collective punishment (which is fine, because Israel beat Gee Dub and Abu Al Gonzalez to the punch decades ago when it comes to tossing off any of the Geneva Conventions) in order to foment a new civil war in Lebanon that will once again leave Lebanese Christians and Lebanese Muslims killing each other and once again reducing Beirut and the soverign government - which had finally reconstructed itself to some semblance of its former glory - to the blasted, destroyed hulk that it once was so that Israel once again can have its way along the border...

...hmm, that sounds anti-semetic when I read it a second time. Oh, well; too bad. I’ve been a strong supporter of Israel’s right to exist my whole adult life (which, sadly for me, is getting to be a long time), but employment of collective punishment against the Lebanese people in an effort to force the government to take action against Hezbollah is quite simply a bridge too far...

One of the problems with the Israeli ‘collective punishment’ attacks on infrastructure is that thousands of foreign nationals found themselves not only unable to escape but limited in their movement. Gee Dub’s response to this crisis is where my original plans for this post went spinning out of control. Not only did your president insist, over and over, that Israel had the right to bomb civilian infrastructure and put as many as 20,000 in-country Americans at risk, but now his minions have decided that the only logical way out for those folks that object to being bombed by a long-time recipient of billions in American aid is to somehow make it to Beirut’s bomb-damaged port facility so they can board a chartered cruise ship and pay for the privilege of being shuttled off to Cyprus.

Pay?? What commercial rates exactly are we talking about here? Love Boat rates? It is almost difficult to put into words the bone-deep sick sense of outrage that I feel about this sort of absolute bullshit. Americans are in trouble and it is just simply the sole obligation of "the World’s Only Superpower" to get them the Hell out of harms’ way. We pay our taxes and we take those trips abroad to places like Beirut - which did not have a travel advisory worth spitting at a couple of weeks ago - on the faith that the government to which we pay our taxes will be there for us if everything goes to hell in a handbasket. If it all goes unexpectedly bad, we are probably going to be just fine with clinging to the deck of some fine sleek grey frigate busting out of the Beirut harbor toward Cyprus at maximum speed. This, however, is like some sort of Halliburton nightmare; since when does the United Friggin’ States of America not have enough money to adequately rescue Americans in some foreign debacle? Where the hell does that come from? Are Coast Guard helicopters and cutters going to be outfitted with card readers and have a sticker strip along the cockpit showing what credit/debit cards are acceptable for payment on rescue missions like some convenience store?

Our own government has taken that next bold step. It has now placed a value on your life; that value is some inexpressible numberless value if you are trapped in a vegetative state in some long term Florida care facility and this government, as controlled by its Republican leaders, will spend millions of dollars in travel, debate, junketing, and politicking to keep you alive over the objections of your legal guardian. If you are a small blob of embryonic cells trapped in a freezer and otherwise destined for a trip to the waste burner, any number of American leaders are standing by to save you from the only other alternative of becoming a stem cell research line. If, on the other hand, you are a living breathing adult American who’s otherwise event-free trip to Beirut has turned into a survival episode because of the sudden onset of conflict, your life is only worth the value you can assign it by promising to pay some bizarre amount for the privelege of being snatched from the jaws of Middle Eastern death on a chartered cruise ship. This isn’t just nuts; it’s a repudiation of the long-understood contract between Americans traveling abroad and their government. It isn’t even an difficult game to come up with a better example of just exactly why this administration is such a danger to American citizens. Not only are you no safer at home, but you probably shouldn’t count on your government abroad unless you have that Visa Card pinned to your chest...

At least now we know that we have some value to our government. It’s measured by our ability to pay for our own rescue - at commercial rates - by our own government. We apparently don’t deserve any more that that....
Posted by: Jack K. / 10:04 PM 0 comments

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Being On the Right (?) Side on Stem Cells 

...it is, I dare say, an understatement to declare that George W. Bush and I see eye to eye on more than a precious few subjects, not that he or Karl lay awake at night worrying about how to fix that. In fact, nothing much other than "breathing is good" comes to mind right now. In the midst of that exhausting list of those things on which this particularly active letter-writing grass-roots voter disagrees with Bush, the most powerful is the issue of embryonic stem cell research. This particular disagreement is rooted in one simple fact: as with almost every issue, George W. Bush doesn't really care much about the subject but knows that it resonates deeply with the Pharisee right that is his only faithful base, whereas I am the parent of a type I diabetic teenager for whom embryonic stem cell research holds some promise for a cure. I've got a dog in this fight; he doesn't...

There is a very particular sort of sharp, biting, bone-deep pain that you feel as a parent when you have to keep telling one of your children, a child you intentionally brought into this world and - at that first moment when you saw him in the doctor's hands in the birthing room - assigned your heart and soul and a host of hopes and dreams to, that doors in life are closed off to him because of this disease that he has. All my son ever wanted to do, from his earliest years, was to be in military service. I certainly don't have a problem with this; I did, too, and would probably have taken that route in life if only the Pentagon would have had the simple obvious foresight to incorporate corrective optometric prescriptions into jet canopies or helicopter windscreens (I could go either way; I just wanted to fly). They were too busy, unfortunately, spending their budgets refining procurement practices that yielded toilet seats and claw hammers costing a hundred times more that the Home Depot version and coffee makers that could withstand forces that the bombers in which they were installed couldn't, and therefore cut corners in other places by, for example, insisting that people selected to fly their planes and helicopters be able to see adequately all by themselves. The difference is, I could still join if I wanted to do something else - which I didn't - and my son, who was and actually is still inspired by the thought of leading infantry troops in battle can't. The difference is between growing out of the desire to be a fireman or a soldier or a policeman and being told at too young an age to adequately manage the disappointment that, all of a sudden and for no reason that any one can understand or explain, that you can't dream of being that person anymore...and, oh, by the way, did we mention the three injections a day and the finger-pricks for the daily blood tests and all the rest?

Now the Senate is moving toward passing a bill that the House has already passed that would liberalize the restrictions that Bush put on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research a few years ago. Despite the fiery and misleading rhetoric being offered by various Pharisee strawmen, Republicans are leaving the President's position in droves; Bill Frist and even my own Gordon Smith are among the Republican Senators supporting this bill. Orin Hatch is there, too, but he, and Smith, perversely have been supporters of liberalized federal stem cell research funding for a number of years, unlike some of these other Johnny-come-lately types. Bush and his brain, Karl Rove, have promised a veto, which has Democrats engaging in subdued conga-dances around tonier Washington neighborhoods, since the polls suggest that Gee Dub and his coven are pretty much on the wrong side of the line on this issue...

Fine. Let 'em fight and carry on. Embryonic stem cell research, like abortion, end of life decisions, and gay marriage, has become just another political beachball. They all matter greatly to someone, either in the abstract or in reality, and this one is mine. As with those other issues, we have to face in the stem cell fight that bizarre spectacle of opposition from people who generally neither have a stake in the outcome or any direct involvement in the subject in general, but - at least in this case - some conservatives have enough sense to understand that we real folks out here in the real world can't reconcile some twisted bizarro-world insistence on the sanctity of embryos that are going to be unceremoniously pitched into medical waste burners rather than be used in an effort to bring some light to darkened lives. It's not the sort of enlightenment that we are likely to see in any of these other pressing social issues (hell, Gordon Smith doesn't even support the Oregon Death With Dignity Act that his constituents have passes twice), but at least for once it's nice to see some of these folks being on the sensible side of the argument...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:19 PM 0 comments

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