Washblog

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Unless Willie Brown was once your city’s mayor, the odds are pretty good that the gay community in your city is not as out and proud as they wish they could be.

In my little corner of the world, the plain fact is that it's probably a lot easier to remain closeted than it is to deal daily with the little taunts and jabs that come your way -- and of course for some, there’s the risk that they might end up like Matthew Shepard...a man who ended up out and dead.

There has been a reaction to that reality in high schools, which is why we are today visiting the public spaces just off the campus of Mt. Si High School in Snoqualmie, Washington (home of the Wildcats), where a local church group will be arriving to protest the school’s annual ‘Day of Silence’;, an effort to acknowledge the pressures placed on the school’s gay population.

Displayed among the various protesters today was fear, ignorance, disingenuousness,  and a strange mixture of self-righteousness and homoeroticism...and that was just among the people in the church group.

Were minds changed?
Did anyone make a new friend?
And how do Dr. Martin Luther King and the Pledge of Allegiance fit into the picture?
Follow along, and we shall see.

There is something magical about Costco.

It is magical to me that for the price of a small can of tomato sauce, they sell a giant can. That they manage to make nice things available for what others charge for ordinary things.

And then of course, there’s the hot dog.
Mr. Sinegal doesn’t know it, but we met in a previous life...more than once...and we actually had a conversation about the hot dogs one evening.

I told him that the soon-to-be-built Qwest Field would be a better place with Costco hot dog carts instead of the “normal” stadium food, and he told me that the hot dog is at the philosophical core of what he does for a living...a simple thing of high quality, a good value—and a good price.

But today’s story isn’t about really great hot dogs.
It’s about really great cinema.

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Your friendly fake consultant has been digging deep into the world of anonymous sources recently, which is why we were able to recently reveal the truth about Hillary Clinton’s Bosnian sniper story.

Today we take that effort further...which is why we are able to bring to light another exclusive peek into the past of a Presidential candidate...only today it’s Barack Obama.

We will examine his prior associations and as a result we will be able to draw new conclusions regarding his world view...and as we said about Clinton, you might be shocked...but probably not surprised.

There has been much made of Hillary Clinton’s recent Bosnian “sniper” incident, and many who have a lower opinion of her as a result.

For the first time ever, we can now reveal in this space that far from being untruthful, Senator Clinton in fact has taken a major political hit in order to protect an important national security program…the existence of which she has not been in a position to reveal.

Through the use of secret anonymous sources we will reveal the surprising reality…the “rest of the story”, if you will—and although you may be shocked, you probably won’t be surprised.

We began a story this week that describes how poor clinical practice in a State-operated healthcare facility holds the potential to cause great injury and death to those vulnerable adults living in the facility, the workers charged with their care—and to members of the public who have never even set foot in the facility.

You might say it’s a bit of a “canary in a coal mine” situation, with pandemic flu hovering on the horizon and all. You also might say that since MRSA kills as many people in the US every year as six 9/11s the pandemic is already here.

So in today’s second installment, we’ll look a bit further: into facility management that now contends they are not required to follow guidelines that the Centers for Disease Control says “apply to all patients, regardless of suspected or confirmed infection status, in any setting in which healthcare is delivered”…into the concept that where your care is delivered should determine what protective equipment workers might require…and into a “magic ambulance” that apparently has the power to make you hazardous to some people--but not to others.

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It has been the practice of your friendly fake consultant to keep my personal life separate from the stories you see in this space; and where exceptions have been made it has been because I felt it necessary to tell a larger story.

The story we will begin to tell today must be offered with my own life deeply intertwined in the narrative.

Sadly, it will not just be me that will be affected by the events we will here discuss. Instead, the list of victims will include some of Washington State’s most vulnerable citizens-- those developmentally disabled individuals who reside in the State’s Residential Habilitation Centers - and the workers who care for them…one of whom is my very own spouse.

We have within the tale all the usual suspects: a lack of safety equipment, managers who fail to do their jobs, a system that’s failing to protect either its own or those who can’t care for themselves -- and now, just to give things a twist, pharmaceutical soap, little orange pills, and color-safe bleach.

As has been indicated before in this space, I am far too addicted to television…and most of the time, even when the sound is off it’s still there to be seen.

But it’s so often confusing.
Here’s an example:

There is an ad running these days for a product called “extend” or “super grow” or “bigs a lot” or whatever the heck it’s called…and while the ad takes great pains to tell us that it can cause a “certain part” of the body to grow larger—it never exactly tells us which part they’re talking about.

Clearly, there are some body parts that it might make sense for someone to enlarge; but the commercial is so vague I just can’t tell what they’re getting at.

It’s that sort of confusion that drives today story…so come along and we’ll pursue the question of what a “make it bigger” product might actually do…and more.

In the beginning, there was darkness.

But then unto the world can Edward R. Murrow, who begat Walter Cronkite…and then there came to pass Huntley and Brinkley.

And it was good, and we were happy.

But then before Pharaoh came Ted Turner, who cried: “Let my people go!”…and thus was CNN brought forth upon the Earth.

For some it was a miracle…but for others the endless repetition of the same stories over and over represents a new 40 years of wandering in the desert.

Can the cycle be broken?
Can an oasis in this desert be found?
Can our thirst for more useful insight be sated?

Those are the questions we pose today…and before we’re done, I’ll offer one potential answer.

We have all seen some impressive advances in technology over the past couple of decades—and many of them have represented science fiction becoming, to one degree or another, science fact.

Sometimes even better.

Dick Tracy’s “wrist TV” is at least equaled by the iPhone...the average minivan carries an network of electronic signal distribution that rivals anything in Buck Rogers...and modern communicators are giving George Orwell a run for his predictive money by advancing their arts in ways that I’m willing to bet even he never anticipated.

But even in the context of all this “gee-whiz” technology something comes along that offers the potential to change so much of what we do today that it deserves special note—even in the midst of a madly competitive political season.

And it will most assuredly change the way you see the world—forever.

Texas.

To think about the place is to consider the duality of Tao.

A State with a dramatic duality of geography—the trees and rolling hills of East Texas compare starkly to the Panhandle...or Corpus Christi, for that matter.

The duality extends to politics as well.

Consider today’s “Madness of King George”, the weird nexus between Conservative politics and State governance as practiced by Rick “Leadership by Coiffure” Perry, and the perennially wacky antics of the Lege and the unique personalities who find there safe harbor.

Balanced against that are the “aw shucks” kinda folks who have truly made Texas great: Jim Hightower, Ann Richards, and Molly Ivins being three examples who between them represent just a tiny scratch on the deeply carved surface of the big picnic table upon which the BBQ of Texas society is served.

Duality factors into today’s conversation as well; as we intertwine thoughts of West Berlin, succession, and a mini-review of one of the world’s preeminent music festivals: SXSW.

Intrigued?
Then let’s get to it.

[Might be the best written and most honest article here in months. A.R.]

Dear Reverend Wright,

I write to you today to offer a small bit of support at what might be a difficult time for your family and yourself.

There are a series of comments of which you are certainly aware that are causing considerable outrage in some quarters this week…but if I may be so bold, I do not understand exactly why the sermons that are today being proffered as unacceptable speech deserve to generate the degree of shock and anger being expressed in the larger political and media communities.

Your friendly fake consultant is an equal-opportunity consultative provider, and having recently been called upon to advise Hillary Clinton, I thought I might turn my attention today to helping out Barack Obama.

The thing is, should the gentleman be nominated, he’s going to need to choose a running mate…and it might not be as easy as it would seem.

For reasons we’ll discuss, the normal crop of candidates might be better left undisturbed…but what if we could bring to the table a running mate who offers an extraordinary understanding of the world’s interconnected economy, a close, personal relationship with many of the world’s leaders—and the kind of negotiating skills that humble even the United States Government?

And if all that wasn’t enough…a candidate for whom fundraising most assuredly won’t be a problem.

Curious?
Follow along, then, and we shall see…

As so many of us discover, late nights are the best time to do any serious writing that has piled up during the day. No meetings to attend, no phone calls to interrupt the flow…and most importantly, nobody else’s fires to put out.

And sure enough, there I was, working away, when the phone rang.

I knew who it was going to be…Hillary.
After all, she’s the only one who ever calls me at 3 AM.

We come before you today with another of those giant stories.

In fact, this one is so large that to make it a bit more digestible we’re going to break it down into smaller parts. Today’s, obviously, is part one.

The issues we’ll discuss will be an immediate concern of the next President, they impact upon our relationships with many of the world’s nations, and they directly affect whether we will return to a nuclear arms race with Russia…and even more fundamentally, whether we will be a nation that embraces the “first use” of nuclear weapons while asking others to give them up.

And with that, I bid you welcome to the mostly uncharted territory of “Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons”.

We are forever being reminded that Americans need to know more about our neighbors around the world...and if you’re reading this, we already know you understand the value of seeking out new perspectives—and that reading the work of bloggers is an excellent way to acquire new knowledge.

If you put all that together, it appears that the missing link in the process of learning more about other countries might just be the lack of a finger to point out some quality bloggers who are able to provide some of the insight we seek (and if any of my Middle Eastern friends are around I’ll point an outstretched hand, instead of the finger, just to be polite...).

By an amazing coincidence, your friendly fake consultant just happens to belong to a worldwide community of bloggers who are more than able to engage the task...so with your permission, let the pointing (and a little bit of shameless promotion of my communal friends) begin.