Posted inCurrent affairs

More gun regulations, fewer deaths. Study of states proves it.

I accept your apologies, gun advocates. In quite a few posts on this blog, I've been stating the obvious: controlling the availability of guns produces fewer gun deaths. After all, guns kill people. People don't kill people.  (The number of bare-handed murders is hugely less than the number of murders by a gun.) But I've gotten quite a few comments from defenders of unfettered gun availability who ignore research proving my point. Hopefully a new study will come closer to convincing them that while they're free to believe what they want to, they aren't free to make up their own…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

For progressives, defense cuts are positive side of sequester

On the whole it's stupid to make across-the-board spending cuts to much of the federal budget. That's what the sequester legislation does, which both parties and Obama agreed to.  Stephen Colbert likened this to someone trying to lose weight by using a scalpel to slice 2% of his poundage off over his entire body. The image was appropriately gruesome.  I don't like the sequester either, in large part because Republicans have come to like it. Anything that shrinks government, they're for. Even if the programs and services being cut are valuable, necessary, and desired by the citizenry. But many progressives…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Just do it: read Steven Brill’s TIME expose of medical costs

It took me two nights of bathtub reading to get through the 26,000 words of Steven Brill's masterful cover story in TIME magazine: "Why Medical Bills are Killing Us." It was time with TIME well spent. Do it. If you haven't already. Read the story. You'll never look upon the health care system in the same way again. Most likely in this way: If you aren't already convinced that hospitals (both non-profit and for-profit), drug companies, and medical device manufacturers aren't dedicated to screwing over the American public, Brill's expose will make you scream: You bastards!  If you were already convinced,…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

David Withnell omits facts about protest at Dodge dealership

A few days ago I saw some guys holding a banner on the sidewalk in front of Salem's Withnell Dodge dealership on Commercial Street. Couldn't read the banner as I drove past. I figured it was some sort of advertising for the dealership. Nope. It was a protest by the Pacific NW Regional Council of Carpenters. I learned this via a February 27 letter to the editor in the Statesman Journal from David Withnell. On Jan. 23, 2013, I showed up for work to find three people in front of my Dodge dealership with a 50-foot banner stating, “Shame on Withnell…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Clackamas County’s strange rail phobia

Don't know if this condition is an official psychiatric diagnosis, but lots of people in Clackamas County (Oregon) sure seem to have it: an irrational fear of trains.  Secondary related symptom: an irrational fear of highway transportation congestion caused in part by a lack of trains. Such is the strangeness of thought disorders. This one just happens to have manifested in a majority of those voting in recent Clackamas County elections, along with a majority of county commissioners.  Watching the malady manifest from Salem, a southward rail-lacking point where we'd love to have light rail to Portland and high speed…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Marijuana

Kaufmann crushes Marquis in KGW marijuana debate

Sure, I'm biased. I want marijuana to be legalized in Oregon. This made good sense before Washington, our neighbor to the north, made pot legal last November. Now, it makes even more sense -- since soon a good share of Oregon's population will be within an hour's driving time of state-sponsored marijuana stores. Recently KGW TV held a "Straight Talk" debate on marijuana legalization between Roy Kaufmann, spokesman for the unsuccessful Measure 80 campaign that would have made pot legal here, and Josh Marquis, Clatsop County district attorney. I liked how both Kaufmann and Marquis were respectful, well-spoken, and generally…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Whew! No reason to worry about Rubio being GOP savior.

Last night I watched Marco Rubio's Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address with some trepidation. After all, TIME magazine has just annointed him on its cover as "The Republican Savior."  And I'm a Democrat. I don't want the GOP to be saved. I want it to continue on down its road to ruin. Thankfully, proving that my prayers to Tao, Buddha-nature, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster paid off, Rubio gave a thoroughly mundane speech which, in my oh-so-reasonable opinion, wouldn't sway many (if any) Dem-voters to the Republican side. I tried to picture independently minded swing…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Gun nut or mass shooter? Sure look the same.

Here's a great "comic" by Jen Sorensen that would be funnier if it wasn't so disturbingly true. l've been thinking in much the same way about what would happen if the NRA's wet dream became reality, and the United States was filled with people carrying military-style assault rifles and other guns openly around in public. That'd be great for mass shooters. Blend right in. Start shooting in a mall, kill a few people, then run around a corner with your rifle over your shoulder and start yelling, "Oh, my God! There's a shooter back there! Take cover. I'm going to…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Oregon should vote on gay marriage AND legal pot in 2014

Let's do it, Oregonians! Catch up to Washington state on "living free." Last year Washington affirmed the legality of gay marriage and legalized marijuana in a groundbreaking election.  While Oregon weenied out on legalizing pot. So now our neighbor state to the north will reap the tax revenues from Oregonians journeying across the border to score some legal weed.  Today I was excited to learn that Basic Rights Oregon has decided to put a measure on the 2014 ballot that would legalize same-sex marriage.  Basic Rights Oregon has been laying the groundwork for a statewide vote on the issue since…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Unfunny humor about gun control

Yesterday a bunch of people brought guns to the Oregon capitol building. They paraded outside showing off their rifles, handguns, shotguns, and other pseudo-macho paraphenalia. Some even brought them inside, since Oregon is one of the few states that allow someone with a concealed handgun permit to carry around a military-style assault rifle in the halls of a Capitol.  Now, news of this sort of event should stimulate a reasonable question: "Who the heck would be so crazy as to carry guns around in public like that for no good reason?" After all, if I was a tourist visiting a state…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Neighborhood

Oregon HOA’s lose out on liens after foreclosure (probably)

I'm the secretary of our planned community's homeowners association (HOA). Our HOA has had to file liens on property owners who fail to pay their dues two years in a row. The dues are only $185 a year. Payment plans are allowed. Volunteers do a lot of the work needed to maintain the common property (we also hire a contractor for mowing, spraying, bark mulching, and such). When dues aren't paid by some of our 90 property owners, the other owners have to make up the lost money. Being the secretary, I have the not-so-fun duty of filing the liens…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Oregonian wastes paper on global warming denier Gordon Fulks

Oregon's largest newspaper, the Oregonian, is not-so-slowly sinking into irrelevancy. That's my considered opinion, at least. As noted in a recent post about a global warming story that downplayed scientific fact and played up a local meteorologist's unscientific denial of climate change, I've noted a distinct right-wing tilting in both the news and editorial sections during the past few years. After reading an absurd January 19 op-ed by Gordon Fulks, "The Changing Climate of Climate Change," that was prominently displayed by Oregonian editors, I'm even more convinced that the newspaper has joined the Republican war on science. It pains me…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Obama’s gun control plan supported by 52% of Americans

When it comes to gun control, the NRA likes to claim that it represents the American public. Not true. Obama does. A national survey conducted January 17-20 among 1,006 adults found that 52% feel that Obama's are about right (39%) or do not go far enough (13%).  By contrast, only 31% say Obama's proposals go too far. (No opinion: 17%) Clearly Obama isn't a radical when it comes to gun control. He's got a majority of the country on his side. Hopefully this majority won't remain silent when it comes time for Congress to vote on requiring background checks for…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Obama gets serious about climate change. Finally.

Yes. Yes. Yes.  I could hear my brain screaming those words when I came across President Obama's strong statement about global warming in his second inauguation address. We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

NRA disparages Secret Service protection for Obama’s daughters

Despicable. Shameful. Outrageous.  Until today I didn't think NRA executives could surprise me by acting more callous, tone-deaf, disrespectful, and unpatriotic than they've demonstrated in the past. But now the NRA has put out a video insulting Obama and his daughters for using the Secret Service protection that has been uncontroversial in the past -- until the NRA decided that the best way to honor the deaths of twenty children at Sandy Hook Elementary School killed by an assault rifle is to pick on Sasha and Malia.  "Has the NRA lost it entirely?" asks Salon. Answer: absolutely. It's fair game…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Science Sustainability

Oregonian story downplays global warming science

Yesterday I emailed a reporter for the Portland Oregonian that writing a story about global warming and including a mention about how some are skeptical the planet is getting hotter is akin to ending a story about a fossil discovery with "but some scientists doubt evolution is real." That would be absurd. Evolution is a scientific truth. So is global warming. There's no doubt among the vast majority of reputable researchers in either field about these facts.  So it bothered me when the reporter, Scott Learn, tossed in this sentence near the end of a story about how a national…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

More guns equals more killing. Obvious equation.

Thank you, Elisabeth Rosenthal, for reminding us of an obvious truth that, sadly, is ignored by a disturbingly large percentage of the people in our gun-crazed country: nations with more guns have more gun deaths.  Duh...  But sometimes those duh... truths which seemingly shouldn't need to be said so often, do need to be repeated over and over -- when there's a willful attempt to ignore the truth. The thousands of needless gun deaths in our country, including the recent twenty-six at Sandy Hook Elementary School, scream out Don't ignore me! So read Rosenthal's "More Guns = More Killing." She's a physician…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Shoulder-fired missiles don’t bring down aircraft, people do. Huh?

Oh, yeah! I'm almost a writer for The New Yorker! My dream. This might be as close as I get, parallel thinking about gun control between The New Yorker's hugely talented Hendrik Hertzberg and way-less-talented me.  But, hey, we're on the same track when it comes to making fun of the absurd contention, "Guns don't kill people, people do." Which is so, so, so wrong. Here's what I said in a blog post on December 29, 2012. Why don't we legalize surface-to-air shoulder fired missiles? After all, people shoot down airplanes; shoulder fired missiles don't shoot down airplanes. If terrorists…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

U.S.A. has more gun violence because it has more guns

There's a simple way to save thousands upon thousands of lives needlessly snuffed out by gun violence in the United States: reduce the availability of guns.  This is so obvious, it's difficult to understand why so many people say, 'the problem is complicated." No, it isn't. That's a lie, mostly spread by people who aren't interested in saving the lives of innocents -- including the twenty children and six adults killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School last month.  So says, Fareed Zakaria, one of this country's clearest-sighted fact-based commentators in The Solution to Gun Violence is Clear. Read the whole…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Debt limit fight: will GOP pay the bills it voted for?

I'm glad that President Obama is vowing to stand firm on not negotiating over an upcoming increase in the federal debt limit.  “I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws that they passed,” the president said Tuesday night after he successfully pushed Republicans to allow tax increases on wealthy Americans. This is the Obama that progressives hoped we'd see after his re-election victory. He's a lot more realistic about how you negotiate, or don't negotiate, with unreasonable fanatics who care much more…
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