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

Friday, May 09, 2008

Honoring That Last Full Measure The Pentagon Way 

...all my little boy ever wanted to be was a soldier. Lots of little boys are like that; I was when I was a kid, until my father - a WWII combat veteran - explained the reality to me in my early teens. I never discouraged my second-born because, even though I came of age during the Vietnam era and was more than happy to graduate from high school just months after the end of the draft, I've always felt that military service was an honorable form of national service. I still feel that way, mostly (it is certainly generally viewed more positively than over 30 years in federal civil service, as far as I can tell), but too many pressure points have been building over the last 7 1/2 years to allow any sort of logical argument for military service...

My little boy isn't so little anymore (being taller than I am even though he is only 15), but I am clear of any of the moral quandries that a parent might face these days about a child becoming a pawn or fodder to Bush's War because of my child's diagnosis a number of years ago with Type I diabetes. That's becoming a strangely perverse good thing, because it has become increasingly clear that there are those in the Pentagon structure - be they civil servants or in-service personnel - who may not have the same understanding of honor that I do. Today, on top of all we have learned regarding the treatment of troops - whether physically or emotionally wounded or not - who return to the States after the most recent of what is increasingly becoming multiple tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, we learn that soldiers who have given what Lincoln called that "last full measure" and who have elected crematation for final disposal of their mortal remains are likely to be sent to a facility that also cremates pets...

Maybe I just don't get it. Maybe I'm just being overly sensitive. I guess I just can't help it; the idea that the mortal remains of my loved one would last be seen being trundled into some facility under a sign that says "Pet Crematorium" strikes me -even in the abstract - as perhaps the most craven, stupid, insensitive thing that some waterhead moron Pentagon bean counter could do. It doesn't matter how many separate incinerators the facility has. Somebody's husband/wife/lover/child/parent died doing what the country asked of him or her, and ending up in a facility that has "Pet Crematorium" on the entrance isn't how you honor that sacrifice, regardless of the convenience, number of incinerators, or attractiveness of the bid price. I hate that my son has diabetes, and I hate that he also has Celiac disease (intolerance to wheat gluten), but I am so damned glad that he can't fall into the clutches of the Bush version of military service that it is almost impossible to put into words...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:02 PM 0 comments

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Lost Bearings, Misplaced Moral Compasses, And A Lively Race To The Finish Line 

...it's beginning to look like the MSM has its next horse race shaping up nicely. Even though we aren't anywhere near to being free and clear of what is beginning to look clearly as the last dying throes of Hillary Clinton's derailed elevation to the Highest Office In The Land (and NO, I am neither an Obama or Clinton supporter, so back off, Buck), we are clearly seeing the shaping of what will be the fall run to the presidential election, as far as the MSM is concerned, in the way that this early sniping between Barack Obama's campaign and that of St. John the Maverick McBush is playing out...

John McCain has a well-established history of knowing full well how to walk on the dirty side of the street when it comes to political campaigns. He has more recently been very clever in mixing in this whole "higher tone" meme while making very sure to supervise the down and dirty activities of other actors who can represent on his behalf without having some organic connection to his campaign. He just can't help himself, though; he just has to be all Maverickie, suggesting - for example - that Obama is the Candidate Of Hamas so that American Jews can have ol' Maverick's impression about where Obama stands on the general subject of Israel. As the exchange between the campaigns documented in this story shows, ol' Maverick is probably in a bit of trouble if he doesn't lay hands on some better stratigests and spokespersons STAT...

As the last few days have pointed out, the loss of that whole "Islamofascist terrorists are going to crawl through your bedroom window to kill you" theme for the Repub party because of the collapsing economy, housing crisis, and out-of-control energy costs is causing the sort of confusion normally only seen when a cat crawls into the henhouse through a hole in the chicken wire. There is a sort of strange, blind confusion on the Republican side that is leading the McCain gang to babble the strangest sort of nonsense about how Obama is disrespecting St. John by calling him old - which reinforces the fact that he is, in fact, old - or about how Obama is some sort of black Muslim Manchurian Candidate - when, in fact, the only candidate still in the race that remarkably resembles that particular theatrical entity is John McCain...

Hillary Clinton will become the Democratic nominee only through scandal or skullduggery, in which case nothing else matters because John McCain will become the 44th President. As long as things keep going the way they are, however, we are certainly promised an entertaining autumn this year...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:37 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

On The Rapid Brutal Demise Of A Previous Blog Post 

...OK, so I have to admit that I had a good bit of fun with the last post. As a life-long resident of the Pac NW and being personally familiar with the proclivities of a certain subset of the small-town Intermountain West population, I found it completely believable that somebody would go to the trouble to make a statement with a few rounds from a "high-powered rifle". It's not like some strange vigilante personal action like this hasn't ever happened before in these parts. Turns out, however, that I may well have been wrong. I certainly won't lose any sleep over this, because Lord knows that this is probably one of the least important entries on the Big List of "When Jack K. Is Wrong", but still...

This new bit of news from my good friends at NOAA actually makes for an even better story than the simple "mass murder of innocent sea lion bystanders" gig that was working yesterday. Now we are faced with a fascinating 'CSI - Columbia River' episode. Now we don't know why the sea lions died, AND we still don't know how the traps got triggered when the 'responsibile parties' were safely tucked into their beds. This could turn out to be a ripping good yarn, and the only down side is that it may well be that the Feds and the State Of Washington got stampeded into an out-of-court agreement with the Humane Society to effectively stop the trapping and removal of profoundly out-of-range California and Steller sea lions on the basis of a buzz saw of publicity and incomplete/incorrect information. I'll probably budget my time in such a way that I canl swallow my pride and say my previous post was misguided while I'm reaching for the microwave popcorn bag to get ready for the next part of this show....
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:43 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

In Other Non-Primary News: Bonehead is Bone Deep 

...somewhere out there tonight, if God is on my side and all the stars and planets are properly aligned (because one can't be too careful, after all, when calling on supernatural forces), somebody is getting the everloving hell beaten out of him by a host of unappreciative former friends in the parking lot of a bar on one or the other bank of the Columbia River. If all those aforementioned forces are connecting in some unpleasant perfect symetry, said victim's savage beating is going down because his former friends know that he is the cause of today's out-of-court settlement between the Humane Society and Washington state and Federal agencies that halts the trapping and removal of salmon-eating sea lions from the base of the Columbia River's Bonneville Dam...

The whole thing started with a plan to kill the relatively recently established populations of sea lions that were lunching on adult salmon near the fish ladders at Bonnevile in an effort to take a new pressure off of the dwindling populations of Columbia River salmon. The Humane Society took exception to this, which led to judicial action that resulted in a plan to trap and relocate (rather than kill) the offending marine mammals. This whole thing has now been undone by some bonehead firing up six sea lions, and now the whole program is canceled; sea lions in the area of offense will only be captured, branded, and released to the same area from which they were captured...at the base of the dam where they can eat more salmon. Both sides in the legal struggle seem to agree that the shooting of California and Steller sea lions in the traps during the wee hours of the night between Saturday and Sunday was a major factor in this short-term settlement...

All of this leaves us in a strange place. The Humane Society is steadfastly defending the right to existence for species that have no meaningful record of residence until the last decade in the area in question. The National Marine Fisheries Service is faced with justifying the killing of marine mammal species that it is charged to protect - including a listed endangered species - in order to protect another host of endangered anadromous fish species that it is also charged to protect. Layered over the top of all of this nastiness is the simple fact of biometrics as represented by the statistical reality of what "a four percent loss" really means in the natural world as opposed to what it sounds like in some heartfelt sound bite. Reality almost doesn't matter in this particular fight; alternative versions compete viciously against each other as the Humane Society's mission runs up against the simply truth of the human alteration of the natural distribution of species. The only thing that could possibly bring this particular conflict to the odd sort of conclusion at which it has arrived was some skilled yet slow-witted rifleman wanting to make a statement of his own. He did that - in spades - and did more to damage the cause that he most likely supported than any number of anti-sea lion protests, be they passive or violent, could have accomplished in anyone's wildest dreams...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:43 PM 0 comments

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Gordon Smith, Man Of The People (For Now) 

...I haven't been keeping up much with local media recently, given my almost paralyzing obsession over whether Barack Obama's connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright makes him unfit to be president. OK, so maybe I'm not obsessing over this, but the MSM sure as hell is. Given the Big Time Talking Heads' concern over the subject (even up to the absurd grilling he got today on Meet the Press), I have been forced to give at least some small measure of thought to how my own political fortunes could be affected by the revelation that my own pastor is, in point of fact, a Canadastanian national working here under a 'green card' permit. As it so happens, there are enough tawdry episodes, evil rumors, and incriminating photographs littering my past that I would be destroyed politically long before talk even got around to my preacher-man, so it's probably just as well that I have no political aspirations...

But as I was saying, I haven't been paying that much attention to state-level media, so it had slipped my attention that there had been a rare Gordon Smith siting, featuring Oregon's newest 'moderate' U. S. Senator hizownself in a TV ad, until I read this post at PolitickerOR.com. It's good to see him again; Smith is like one of those kids who goes off to college and never calls or writes home until you threaten to cut off the tuition payments. His ongoing claim has been that he prefers to work behind the scenes rather than trotting around of the national stage proclaiming all of his great works. That may be true, but it is also true that it gives him the working space in a world of low-information voters to spend four out of every six years in each of his terms voting roughly 90% of the time with his Republican colleagues - which would suggest precious few real live redeemed opportunities to work across party lines - and then spend that last 24-month run to the election throwing in a few splashy 'moderate' votes that he can base campaign advertising on...

Being able to observe the comforting, unchanging tempo of life is a reassuring thing, and Gordon Smith certainly does his part. As winter inevitably leads into spring, as the cliff swallows return faithfully year after year to San Juan Capistrano, Smith can be counted on over the bulk of an elected term to quietly, with little notice or fanfare, address the issues as a reliable conservative Republican vote until it's time to come around at election time all gussied up in his 'moderate' duds with a few centrist votes prominently sticking out of his pockets. With well over 8 million dollars in his campaign coffers, he can afford that get-up and he can afford to show it off to all of us rubes back home, and he most certainly will. He learned that lesson well, after all, when he lost to Ron Wyden in the 1996 special election to fill Bob Packwood's vacated Senate seat, and he applied what he learned when he was elected to replace the retiring Mark Hatfield later that year and in his reelection in 2000...

Since nobody back home ever hears from him for four years out of every six, most people don't know the degree to which he has voted against their interests. They are none the wiser, as a result, when he floods the media markets with all of his chatter about being a true moderate and independent thinker, which this first ad in the most recent "Reinvention of Gordon Harold Smith" campaign so aptly illustrates. The first job, on May 21, after the Orygun primary has decided who will be the Democratic nominee, will be to acquaint the folks back home what Gordon has been doing for ALL of the last 6 years while he was gone...
Posted by: Jack K. / 3:47 PM 0 comments

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